
Class 
Book 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 




TINTERN ABBEY— NAVE 



A ruined temple! yet no ruin this, 

That fills the mind with thought, 
The soul with bliss! 



GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 



BY 



WILLIAM WINTER 
it 



Whether in cloud or sun, on England's Isle 
Immortal Memory sheds her radiant smile 



New York 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1911 






'V 



■V 



Copyright, 1893, 1911, by 
WILLIAM WINTER 

All Bights Beserved 



Published, February, 1911 



©CI.A283274 



I 

"i To My Dear Daughter 

VIOLA WINTER STILSON, 

With Loving Thought of Her 

Gentle Spirit, Goodness, and Grace, 

I Dedicate These Word Pictures 

Of Our Ancestral Home 



My child, — for a child you will always remain, — 

Let me link your dear name with this gossamer chain 

Of some roses of England, if so I may say, 

That were gathered and saved on my wandering way, 

With the wish that as long as they bloom on their stem 

That name will be blended with beauty and them. 



PREFACE 

This book relates to the gray days of an American 
traveller in the mother-land and to the gold of thought 
and fancy that can be found there. In its prede- 
cessor, Shakespeare's England, an attempt was made 
to describe, in a simple, unconventional manner, lovely 
scenes which are inseparably intertwined with the name 
and memory of Shakespeare, and also to reflect the 
charm of that English scenery which, to an imaginative 
mind, is, and must always be, impressive by reason of 
its gentle beauty, venerable antiquity, and romantic 
association, — a charm which has inspired much of the 
best English Poetry, of which Shakespeare is the 
fountain head. This book continues the same treat- 
ment of kindred themes, taking them as they chanced to 
occur, and commenting on them in a sympathetic spirit, 
with no thought of assuming to be mentor or guide. 

In its original form, — Edinburgh, 1889, New York, 
1892, — Gray Days and Gold comprised, besides the 
chapters on England and English themes, several pa- 
pers on the land of Burns and Scott. My first visit 

to Scotland was made in 1888, and was limited to 

9 



10 PREFACE 

the Lowlands, but since then I have had the privilege 
of making many Highland rambles, and, in particular, 
of passing thoughtful days in the wild and lovely Island 
of Iona, one of the most interesting places in Europe. 
It has seemed desirable that all my sketches of Scot- 
land should form a single group, and those readers who 
care to keep me company beyond the limits of this work 
will find the sketches which have been withheld from 
this, the final form of Gray Days and Gold, together 
with other memorials of my travel in that country, 
coordinated in my new book, a companion to this one, 
called Over the Border. To supply the place of the 
chapters thus withdrawn I have inserted several papers 
of mine, on English themes, first published in my Old 
Shrines and Ivy, now long out of print, and therewith 
have incorporated other sketches of mine which have 
not hitherto been collected: I have also used a short 
paper recording impressions on the occasion of my 
first visit to France, made not long after the close of 
the war between that country and Germany. Before 
submitting this book to public consideration I have, 
furthermore, rewritten a considerable part of its con- 
tents and revised the rest, so that now it is entirely a 
new work in form and largely so in substance. 

In its first shape Gray Days has passed through more 



PREFACE 11 

than fifteen large editions. Its success, abroad as well 
as at home, — and, indeed, the success that has attended 
all my publications, — is deeply gratifying to me, the 
more so that I did not expect it. That which has 
pleased many and pleased long must, we are assured 
by one of the wisest of men and greatest of writers, 
be held to possess merit, and surely no author can 
rightly be censured for vanity who is pleased because 
he has given pleasure while endeavoring to adhere, 
in literary expression, to the requirements of truth, 
simplicity, and beauty. My sketches of travel are 
the spontaneous creations of genial impulse, and, 
in as far as I thought about them at all, I did not 
suppose that they would endure beyond the hour. 
If I had expected the remarkably cordial approba- 
tion which has been accorded to my humble studies 
of British scenery and life, I should have tried to 
make them better, and especially I should, from 
the first, have taken scrupulous care to verify every 
date and every statement of fact set forth in my 
text. That precaution I did not invariably take, 
except in my critical and biographical work, but, as 
my mood was that of contemplation and reverie, so my 
method was that of the dreamer who drifts carelessly 
from one attractive place to another, uttering what- 



12 PREFACE 

ever thoughts happen to come to him. In later editions 
of my sketches of travel, however, and particularly in 
preparing the text for the final editions of Shake- 
speare's England, Gray Days, and Over the Bor- 
der, / have made conscientious and diligent en- 
deavor to remove every defect and to correct every 
error, and if any errors have crept into my text I shall 
be grateful to such readers as may be kind enough to 
bring them to my attention. 

If it should be thought presumptuous on my part 
that I have tried to celebrate the beauties of our an- 
cestral home I can only plead, in extenuation, an ir- 
resistible impulse of reverence and affection for them. 
My presentment of them should not give offence, and 
perhaps it will be found sufficiently vital, various, and 
sympathetic to awaken and sustain a momentary in- 
terest in the minds of those readers who love to muse 
and dream over relics and records of the past. If by 
happy fortune it should do more than that, — if it 
should help to impress my countrymen, so many of 
whom annually travel in Great Britain, with the super- 
lative importance of adorning the physical aspect and 
refining the material civilization of America by a re- 
production within its borders of whatever is valuable m 
the long experience and whatever is noble, tranquil, and 



PREFACE 13 

beautiful in the domestic and religious spirit of the 
British Islands, — my labor will not have been vain. 
The supreme need of this time is a practical conviction 
that progress does not consist merely in material pros- 
perity, but largely in spiritual advancement. Use has 
long been almost exclusively worshipped. The wel- 
fare of the future lies in the worship of Beauty. This 
idea might, perhaps, to the sociologist or the political 
economist, seem fantastic, but if each member of a 
community were insistent to live a beautiful life, to be 
companioned by faith and hope, to diffuse kindness, 
and, as far as possible, to be surrounded by objects 
and influences of beauty, the community would be bene- 
fited by that insistence. To the worship of beauty 
these pages, — and all other pages that my pen has 
written, — are devoted, with all that it implies of sym- 
pathy with the good instincts and faith in the high 
destiny of the human race. 

W. W. 

July 15, 1910. 



CONTENTS 



I. Southampton 

II. Salisbury and Stonehenge 

III. Haunts of Moore . 

IV. Bath and Bristol . 

V. The Faithful City . 

VI. Lichfield and Dr. Johnson 

VII. Bosworth and King Richard 

VIII. Old York 

IX. Stratford Gleanings 

X. The Childs Fountain . 

XI. The Shakespeare Church 

XII. Rambles in Arden . 

XIII. On the Avon . 

XIV. Hereford and Tintern Abbey 

XV. Tennyson 

XVI. Stratford to Nottingham 

XVII. Nottingham and Newstead 

XVIII. Byron .... 

XIX. Hucknall-Torkard Church 

XX. Haunts of Wordsworth 

XXI. Gray and Arnold . 

XXII. Through Surrey and Kent 

XXIII. A French Vignette 

XXIV. From London to Edinburgh 



PAGE 

40 
53 
76 
87 
101 
117 
133 
150 
182 
192 
202 
220 
228 
241 
251 
260 
279 
288 
310 
330 
343 
354 
363 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Tintern Abbey.— The Nave 
Ruins of Netley Abbey 
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain — 

Looking to the West . 
Thomas Moore 
Moore's Home — Sloperton Cottage 

— Bromham .... 
Bath Abbey— West Front 
Church of St. Mary Redcliffe— 

Bristol 

Worcester Cathedral — from South 

west 

Lichfield Cathedral— West Front 
York Minster — West Front . 
York Minster — the Choir: Looking 

East 

York Minster — from Southeast 

The Mary Arden Cottage — Wilmcote 

In Sherwood Forest 

Ruins of Chepstow Castle 

The Wyndcliff of the Wye— Near 

Chepstow .... 

17 



. Frontispiece ^ 
Facing Page 26 ^ 



48 S 
62 i 

74 
78 

82 

94 • 
102^ 

134 i- 

142 -" 

160'' 

166^ 

190^ 

206^ 

" 234 ^ 



18 ILLUSTRATIONS 

Ruins of Tintern Abbey . . Facing Page 240 ^ 
Alfred Tennyson " " 250 " 
Castle-Rock and Museum, Not- 
tingham " " 262 ^ 

Hucknall-Torkard Church: Byron's 

Grave " "294^ 

William Wordsworth ..." " 312^ 
Wordsworth's Home: Rydal Mount 

— Grasmere " " 320^ 

Robert Southey " " 328 / 

The Shakespeare Cliff — Dover . " " 354 ' 

Durham Cathedral — from Southwest " " 368 ' 



"Whatever withdraws us from the power of our 
senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the 
future predominate over the present, advances us in 
the dignity of thinking beings. . . . All travel has its 
advantages. If the passenger visits better countries 
he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune car- 
ries him to worse he may learn to enjoy it." 

Dr. Johnson. 

"There is given, 
Unto the things of earth which time hath bent, 
A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant 
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power 
And magic in the ruined battlement, 
For which the palace of the present hour 
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower." 

Byron. 

"The charming, friendly English landscape! Is 
there any in the world like it? To a traveller re- 
turning home it looks so kind, — it seems to shake 
hands with you as you pass through it." 

Thackeray. 



I. 

SOUTHAMPTON. 

Early in the morning of a brilliant day 
the Scilly Islands came into view, and I could 
see the great waves breaking into flying masses 
and long wreaths of snowy foam on their 
grim shores and in their rock-bound chasms. 
Yet a little while and the steep cliffs of Corn- 
wall glimmered into the prospect, with the 
double towers of the Lizard Light, and I 
knew that my voyage was accomplished. 
Then followed the lovely, varied panorama of 
the Channel Coast, — lonely Eddystone, keep- 
ing its sentinel watch in solitude and mystery; 
the green pastures of Devon; the crags of 
Portland, gray and emerald and gold, shining, 
changing, and fading in silver mist; the 
shelving fringes of the Solent; the sandy 

coves and green hills of the beautiful Isle of 

21 



22 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Wight; and then, at last, placid Southampton 
Water, with its little lighthouses and its 
crescent town, vital with incessant enterprise 
of the Present and rich with splendid associa- 
tions of the Past. The gloaming had begun to 
fade into night when I landed, and in the 
sleepy stillness of the vacant streets and of 
the quiet inn I was soon conscious of that 
feeling of peace and comfort which is the 
first sensation of the old traveller who comes 
again into England. It is the sensation of 
being at home and at rest, after long wander- 
ing and much vicissitude, and seldom elsewhere 
is it found. 

If the old city of Southampton were not, 
as to the majority of ramblers it is, merely 
a port of entry and departure, if the traveller 
were constrained to seek it as a goal instead of 
treating it as a thoroughfare, its uncommon 
physical beauty and its antiquarian interest 
would be more widely appreciated and more 
highly prized than now they appear to be. 
Objects that are viewed as incidental are 
seldom comprehended as important. Traffic, 



SOUTHAMPTON 23 

with its attendant bustle, imparts to South- 
ampton an habitual air of turbulence and 
often of commonness. The spirit of the age, 
notwithstanding that there is a newly awak- 
ened feeling of reverence actively at work in 
many places, makes slight account of pic- 
turesque accessories and does little either to 
perpetuate or to create them. In Southamp- 
ton, for example, as in ancient Warwick, a 
tramcar jolts and jangles through the grim 
arch of a gray stone gate of the Middle 
Ages, and thus the Present forces its 
contrast with the Past. Yet here as 
everywhere the Present and the Past are 
inseparably associated, the one being the con- 
sequence and inheritor of the other, and in 
no better way can the student of social develop- 
ment pursue his study than in rambling 
through the streets and among the structures 
that To-day has built amid the ruins and the 
relics of Yesterday. A walk in breezy South- 
ampton is full of instruction. There was a 
merry multitude on the lovely green Common, 
when first I saw it; a band was playing in 



24 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

its pavilion, and twittering birds were circling 
around the tree-tops, in the light of the 
evening sun; but as I stood there and watched 
the happy throng and listened to the martial 
music, the scene seemed suddenly to change, 
and I beheld the armored cohorts of bold King 
Henry the Fifth, and heard the trumpets 
blare, and saw the gallant warrior, upon his 
mail-clad charger, riding downward to the sea, 
— for Agincourt, and the laurel of everlasting 
fame. 

Many days might pleasurably be spent in 
Southampton and its charming neighborhood. 
When there you are at the mouth of the 
Itchen, the river of Isaak Walton, who lived 
and died at venerable Winchester, only a few 
miles away. The ruin of Netley Abbey is 
close by, — that venerable remnant of an 
ecclesiastical structure of about the thirteenth 
century, in which the superb framework of 
the large western window and the graceful 
shapes of several lancets, together with many 
clustered columns, bear witness to the deep 
devotional spirit and the delicate taste of the 



SOUTHAMPTON 25 

pious monks who built it. On every side, 
indeed, there is something to stimulate the 
fancy and awaken remembrance of romance 
and of historic lore. King John's house is 
extant, in Blue Anchor Lane. King John's 
Charter can be seen, in the Audit House. 
The Bridewell Gate still stands, that was built 
by King Henry the Eighth, and in Bugle 
Street is the Spanish prison that was used in 
the time of Queen Anne. At the foot of High 
Street stood King Canute's palace, and upon 
the neighboring beach that monarch spoke his 
vain command to stay the advancing waves, 
and made his memorable submission to the 
Power that is greater than kings. In Porter's 
Lane there is a remnant of his palace, utilized 
now as a stable. In St. Michael's Square 
stands an ancient, red-tiled house, made of 
timber and brick, in which Anne Boleyn once 
lodged, and which, to this day, bears her name. 
It is a two-story building, surmounted by four 
large gables, the front curiously diversified 
with a crescent pent and with four large 
diamond-latticed casements; and gazing on it 



26 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

I could not fail to conjure up a vision of 
that dark-eyed, golden-haired beauty whose 
fascination played so large a part in shaping 
the religious and political destiny of England. 
There, at those windows, she may have stood 
and looked forth on the grim, gloomy Norman 
church that still frowns on the lonely square 
and would make a darkness even at noon. A 
few steps from St. Michael's will bring you to 
a relic of a different kind, fraught with widely 
different associations, — the birthplace of the 
pious hymnist, Isaac Watts. The house stands 
in French Street, a little back from the side- 
walk, on the east side, and it is a two-story, 
red-brick dwelling, having eight windows and 
two doors in the front of it. Between the 
house and the street there is a garden, which, 
when I saw it, was brilliant with the blazing 
yellow of a mass of blooming marigolds. A 
tall iron fence encloses the garden, within 
which are six poplar trees, growing along the 
margin, and if you stand at the gate and 
look along French Street you can discern 
Southampton Water, at no great distance. 




o 

Q 






SOUTHAMPTON 27 

They venerate the memory of Dr. Watts in 
Southampton, and they have not only built a 
church in his honor (it stands near Bar Gate), 
but have set up a statue of him in the Park, 
— the figure of the apostolic bard as he 
appeared when preaching. That piece of 
sculpture, the pedestal of which is faced with 
medallions illustrative of the life and labors 
of Watts, was dedicated by the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, in July, 1861. 

Leaving the birthplace of the old divine 
you have only to turn a neighboring corner 
and proceed a short distance to find an effect 
of contrast still more remarkable, — the rem- 
nant of the Domus Dei, in Winkle Street, the 
burial place of the noblemen, Scrope, Gray, 
and Cambridge, who lost their lives for con- 
spiracy to assassinate King Henry the Fifth. 
That edifice, founded in the reign of King 
Richard the First, was an almshouse in the 
time of King Harry. All that remains of 
the original building is the chapel, and that 
has been restored — a small, dark, oblong 
structure, partly Norman and partly Early 



28 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

English. Queen Elizabeth assigned that 
church for the use of Huguenot refugees who 
fled from the persecution of the Spanish 
tyrant, Alva, so perniciously active in the Low 
Countries, from 1567 to 1573. Service is still 
performed in it, in the French language. 
Under its chancel rest the ashes of the false 
friends, dismissed to their death nearly five 
centuries ago, who would have slain their 
king and imperilled their country, and upon 
the south wall, near to the altar, there is a 
tablet of gray stone, inscribed with black, 
indented letters, bearing this record of their 
fate: 

BICHARD, EARL OF CAMBRIDGE, 

LORD SCROPE OF MASHAM, 

SIR THO. GRAY OF NORTHUMBERLAND, 

CONSPIRED TO MURDER KING 

HENRY V. IN THIS TOWN AS HE 

WAS PREPARING TO SAIL WITH HIS 

ARMY AGAINST CHARLES THE SIXTH, 

KING OF FRANCE, FOR WHICH 

CONSPIRACY THEY WERE EXECUTED 

AND BURIED NEAR THIS PLACE 

IN THE YEAR 

MCCCCXV 



SOUTHAMPTON 29 

As you stand by that sepulchre you will 
remember with a new interest and emotion 
the noble, pathetic speech, — as high a strain 
of pure eloquence and lofty passion as there 
is in our language, — with which Shakespeare 
makes the heroic prince, at the same instant, 
deplore and rebuke the treachery of the friend- 
ship in which he had entirely believed and 
trusted. Those lords were beheaded just out- 
side of Bar Gate. Near to their burial-place, 
leaning against the wall, is a fine old brass, — ■ 
the full-length figure, in profile, mounted upon 
an oak board, of a French cleric of the time 
of Queen Elizabeth, the head being of marble, 
while the person is of the dark green hue that 
old brasses so often acquire, and that seems 
to enhance at once their interest and their 
opulence of effect. 

In Southampton, as in many other parts 
of England, the disposition to preserve the 
relics of a romantic past is stronger at present 
than it was a hundred years ago, and for this 
the antiquarian has reason to be grateful. 
His constant regret, indeed, is that this gentle 



30 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

impulse did not awaken earlier. The old 
Castle of Southampton, where King Stephen 
dwelt, was long ago destroyed, but frag- 
ments of the walls remain, and these, it is 
pleasant to observe, are guarded with scrupu- 
lous care. As you stroll along the shore your 
gaze will wander from the gay and busy 
steamboats, — alert for the Channel Islands 
and for France, and seeming like brilliant 
birds that plume their wings for flight, — and 
will rest on grim towers and bastions of the 
thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, over 
which the ivy hangs, in dense draperies of 
shining foliage, and against which copious 
flowers of geranium and nasturtium blaze in 
scarlet and gold. One of those citadels, peace- 
fully occupied now by the Harbor Board, 
bears record of a time, in 1482, when gun- 
powder was used there, to repel a night 
attack made by the French. A straggling 
procession of belated travellers, bearing bags, 
rushed wildly by, as I stood before that gray 
remnant of feudal magnificence, and an idle 
youth in the gateway, happily provided with a 



SOUTHAMPTON 31 

flageolet, gayly performed upon it "The Girl 
I Left Behind Me." Nothing can exceed, in 
mingled strangeness and drollery, the use of 
such quaint places as this for the business and 
pleasure of the passing hour. Roaming 
through the narrow, squalid little thorough- 
fare of Blue Anchor Lane, amid the pic- 
turesque foundations of what was once the 
royal palace of King John and of King 
Henry the Third, now a mass of masonry that 
has outlasted the storms and ravages of almost 
a thousand years, I looked at dingy lodging- 
houses that are scarcely more than holes in a 
wall, and threaded a difficult way among 
groups of ragged children, silenced for a 
moment by the presence of a stranger, but 
soon loud again in their careless frolic over 
the degraded grandeur of forgotten kings. 
Blue Anchor Lane leads to the Arcade in the 
west wall of the city, which, with its nineteen 
splendid arches, is surely as fine a specimen 
of true Norman architecture as can be found 
in the kingdom. Bar Gate, at the top of 
High Street, is also a noble relic of Norman 



32 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

taste and skill, but Bar Gate has been some- 
what modernized by changes and restoration, 
and the statue, upon its south front, of King 
George the Third, in the dress of a Roman 
Emperor, mars its venerable, antique char- 
acter by suggestion of ludicrous incongruity. 
Charles Dibdin, who wrote the best sea-songs 
in our language, was a native of Southampton. 
Millais, the painter, was born there, as also 
was the heroic General Gordon. The name 
of that daring soldier, the eccentric Earl of 
Peterborough, is associated with the place, for 
once he owned an estate in its neighborhood, 
called Bevoir Mount, whither the illustrious 
Voltaire came, as a visitor, and where can be 
seen a stately cedar tree beneath which the 
French cynic often sat. 

There is a rapid way of looking at the 
world, with which many travellers appear to 
be content, but it can be doubted whether 
the rapid way is often the wise way. Places 
no doubt there are through which the pilgrim 
should pass with convenient speed, but, as a 
rule, almost every place, in an old country, 



SOUTHAMPTON 33 

is a place of interest, and that is especially 
true of England, where so much has been lost 
and won, so much done and suffered, such 
hallowing charms of poetry and such wealth 
of historic action diffused, that every region 
has its traditions, every temple its relics, and 
every city, town, and hamlet its legends, asso- 
ciations, and romance: and certainly every 
place has its surprises, — as I could not choose 
but think when, in the course of a lonely walk 
in Southampton, I found, in the lane called 
Back of the Walls, the burial-place of that 
cheery dramatist, John O'Keeffe. He was 
a blithe spirit, and even to come near his 
ashes was to be reminded of the joy and 
sunshine that are in the world, and how idle 
it is not to rejoice while yet the light endures. 
John O'Keeffe was a pioneer in the reaction 
against the sentimental drama in England 
which culminated with the success of Goldsmith, 
Colman the younger, and Sheridan, and, as a 
lover of the dramatic art, I felt that I had 
come upon the shrine of a benefactor. Many 
remember "Wild Oats," but few know that the 



34 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

author of that gay comedy, and of about fifty 
others, rests in an obscure corner of South- 
ampton. He was born in Dublin, in 1747; 
he had his career as actor and author; he 
became blind, about 1800; he enjoyed a small 
pension during the last few years of his life, 
and he died in 1833, in his eighty-sixth year, 
and was buried in All Saints' ground, in the 
parish of St. Lawrence. I had passed many 
days in solitary rambling about Southampton, 
and had carefully explored it, yet even then 
I stumbled upon a novelty, and there is a 
pleasure in discoveries, such as the routine 
spectacles do not impart. 

O'Keeffe's sepulchre is somewhat difficult 
of access, the cemetery of All Saints, long 
ago disused, being situated in a squalid 
region and enclosed within a high wall. 
The key to the place was obtained from 
the neighboring abode of a butcher, some 
of whose sheep were grazing among the 
graves. The least of those animals was so 
tame that he came to me and thrust his 
nose into my hand. "I keep that there one," 



SOUTHAMPTON 35 

the serious butcher said, "to lead the others 
to death." No arrangement, surely, could 
be more harmonious with those grim sur- 
roundings. The graves in that forlorn 
yard are numerous, and each one is not 
only marked by a tall, perpendicular stone 
but also covered with a flat slab, the 
inscription being indented, and painted black. 
O'Keeffe's grave is close to the wall, near a 
large wooden gate, in the southeast corner of 
the enclosure. The environment of shops and 
stables, the absence of foliage and flowers, and 
the presence of rubbish invested it with an 
air of extreme desolation; but all sepulchres, 
however they may be beautified, are unspeak- 
ably dreary, when you consider their stony 
silence and muse on the humor, grace, and 
joy that were hushed and hidden in their 
depths. The mourners for the sprightly 
dramatist have long since followed him to 
rest, and here, as elsewhere, charitable, con- 
soling Time turns all things to peace. The 
inscription upon the tombstone, once viewed 
through tears, is read without a sigh: 



36 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

WITHIN THIS GEAVE 

ARE DEPOSITED 

THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 

JOHN o'KEEFFE ESQ, 

A PIOUS MEMBER OF THE 

HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 

IN THE 86TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. 

HE WAS BORN IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, 

THE 24th OF JUNE, 1747, 

AND DIED AT SOUTHAMPTON 

THE 4TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833. 

BLESSED BE HIS SPIRIT 

IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR 

JESUS CHRIST. 

THE ABOVE INSCRIPTION WRITTEN 

AND THIS STONE PLACED 

TO HIS BELOVED MEMORY 

BY HIS ONLY DAUGHTER AND SURVIVING 

CHILD 

ADELAIDE o'KEEFFE. 

Many excursions are practicable from South- 
ampton. One of the prettiest of them is the 
drive westward, by the Commercial Road and 
Romsey Lane, to the village of Millbrook, 
where there is an old church, and where, in the 
cemetery, an obelisk of granite marks the rest- 



SOUTHAMPTON 37 

ing place of Robert Pollok, author of "The 
Course of Time," — a poem much read and 
admired by pious persons long ago. The 
New Forest, ten miles from the city, is readily 
accessible, where the visitor will see the pic- 
turesque, ivy-clad ruin of Beaulieu Abbey, a 
religious house founded, 1204, in the reign of 
King John, and, in a dell called Canterton 
Glen, the spot, duly marked, where King 
William the Second was slain by the arrow of 
Sir Walter Tyrrell, in August, 1100. Another 
excursion, which can be made on foot, is the 
ramble along the Avenue to Southampton 
Common, and so, beneath oaks, elms, and lime- 
trees, and through a tangle of shrubbery, 
to a beautiful cemetery, in which haw- 
thorns, evergreens, and a radiant profusion of 
flowers have made a veritable bower for the 
awful silence and inscrutable majesty of death. 
I went there to look upon the burial-place of 
my old friend Edward A. Sothern, the once 
famous comedian, and I came to it in an 
afternoon that was all sunshine and fragrance, 
— like the days of careless mirth that once 



38 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

we knew together. There never can have been 
a more whimsical spirit. I have not known an 
actor who added to the faculty of eccentric 
humor a more subtle perception of character 
or a more neat artistic skill in the display 
of it. Few players have made as much 
laughter or given as much innocent pleasure. 
But Sothern, who could not bear prosperity, 
lived too much for enjoyment, and so, pre- 
maturely, his bright career ended. A simple 
cross of white marble marks the place of his 
last sleep, and the leaves of a sturdy oak 
rustle over it, and as I turned away from 
that place of peace I saw the shimmering 
roses all around, and heard the cawing of 
rooks in distant elms and felt that in this 
slumber there are no dreams and that with 
the dead all is well. 

Artemus Ward died in Southampton. It 
seems but yesterday since those lords of frolic 
were my companions, but the grass has long 
been growing over them and the echo of their 
laughter has died away. Historic association 
dignifies a place, but it is personal associa- 



SOUTHAMPTON 39 

tion that makes it familiar. In Southamp- 
ton Bay the Pilgrim Fathers, nearly three 
hundred years ago, prepared to set sail to 
found another England in the western world. 
Many memories haunt the town, but to one 
dreamer its name will ever, first of all, bring 
back the slumberous whisper of leaves that 
ripple in a summer wind, and the balm of 
flowers that breathe their blessing on a com- 
rade's rest. 



II. 

SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE. 

A pleasant course, if you would drift from 
the Channel coast into the Midlands, is to go 
from Southampton, by either Winchester or, 
less directly, by Salisbury, to Basingstoke, and 
thence northward by Reading and Oxford. 
Another good way is to loiter along the west 
of England, taking the track of the Cathedral 
Towns, and viewing whatever of historic 
interest can be observed in those places and 
in the memorable regions that environ them. 
There should be no inexorable route, for the 
chief charm of travel is liberty to indulge 
fancy, and, in England, whichever way you 
turn you will surely find some peculiar beauty 
to reward your quest. My path traversed 
Salisbury, Amesbury, Stonehenge, Glaston- 
bury, Wells, Cheddar, Bristol, Gloucester, 

40 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 41 

Worcester, and Evesham, and all the while it 
seemed to wind through a fairy realm of 
flowers and dreams. Each part of England 
has its charming peculiarities, but the general 
characteristic of English scenery is loveliness. 
The cities are the workshops; the rest is a 
garden of diversified beauty. As you range 
through the country you gaze on wooded hills 
glimmering in the distance, dark or bright 
beneath skies of cloud or sun, — never one 
thing long, but changeful, like a capricious 
girl, whose loveliness is the more bewitching 
because of her caprice. Green fields, in which 
cattle are grazing and sheep are couched 
beneath the trees, fill the foreground of the 
prospect. Here and there stately manor 
houses gleam in lordly groves. Little cottages, 
picturesque with thatched roofs and tiny lat- 
ticed windows, nestle by the roadside. Some 
of the fields have been gleaned and ploughed, 
so that the bare earth, in rich brown squares, 
presents a lively contrast to meadows of 
brilliant grass and masses of rippling barley. 
Now and then you see a comely mare, with her 



42 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

awkward little colt, reposing in the shadow of 
a copse. Yellow haystacks, artfully trimmed, 
attract the eye, and circular clumps of trees 
upon the hill-slopes attest the wise care of the 
gardener of an earlier day. The land is gently 
undulating, and in the valleys there are rows 
of pollard willows, by which you can trace 
the current of a hidden stream. Far away or 
near at hand sometimes suddenly appears a 
gray spire or a grim tower, suggesting thought 
of monastic seclusion or historic antiquity. 
White roads, often for many miles devoid 
equally of vehicles and pedestrians, wind 
through the plains and over the ridges of 
lonely hills. Rivers gleam in the landscape, 
some rapid and some tranquil. Rain-clouds 
frequently drift over the scene, but only serve 
to make it more sweetly beautiful. The 
countryside is a continuous pageant, softly 
blending wood and meadow, park and com- 
mon, church and castle, lawn and pasture, 
clouds that are like bronze, and earth that is 
clad in scarlet and green, — while over the 
broad expanse of this various loveliness, in 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 43 

which the fresh garlands of Nature deck with 
bloom the crumbling relics of an historic 
architectural grandeur, the skies of summer 
bend with a benediction of smiling grace. 

"Once more I came to Sarum Close." It 
is many a year since I read "The Angel in 
the House," — that chivalric, tender poem by 
Coventry Patmore, — but it came freshly into 
my thoughts, as I walked again along the 
familiar avenue, and approached the beautiful 
Cathedral of Salisbury. No fitter environ- 
ment could be found for a representative 
love-story of the fastidious order, and seldom 
in poetical literature has scenery been so deftly 
blended with sentiment as it is in Patmore's 
melodious pages. Among the cities of Eng- 
land none can excel Salisbury in opulent 
refinement. The White Hart, near the 
Cathedral, is a desirable, convenient inn, and 
from that point it is easily possible to visit 
many scenes of interest and delight. A walk 
of two miles, mostly through fields, will bring 
you to Bemerton, and then you are in the 
valley where George Herbert lived some part 



44 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

of his saintly life and wrote some of his 
exquisite devotional poetry. St. Andrew's, the 
tiny church of Bemerton, nestles deep in the 
bosom of a green vale, forming the apex of a 
small churchyard, full of roses and cedar trees, 
and over it broods the blessing of perfect 
repose. Chief among the inscriptions within its 
walls are the sacred words of promise and com- 
fort, "In this place will I give peace," and 
no words could better express the spirit and 
influence of Herbert's temple. I entered the 
church at evening, when it was all in shadow, 
when birds were calling to their mates, when 
the children in the neighboring rectory were 
singing a vesper hymn, and when, at the 
approach of night, the summer breeze was 
heavy with the scent of roses and of new- 
mown hay; and very sweet it was, there to 
meditate upon the pure spirit, gentle life, and 
exquisite art of the poet and preacher whose 
presence once made it a shrine for many lov- 
ing worshippers, and whose name has hal- 
lowed it forever. Herbert died at Bemerton, 
in 1633, and his dust reposes near the altar 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 45 

of his church. That church is only fifty feet 
long, by fourteen wide, and it is said to have 
been built in 1408, by an Abbess of Wilton, 
— which then was a convent, and on the site of 
which now stands Wilton House, the splendid 
abode of the noble family of Pembroke. The 
chancel, — once repaired by Herbert, to whom 
the church was precious, — was rebuilt in 1866. 

Another pleasant walk from Salisbury, 
going southward about two miles, along the 
bank of the Wiltshire Avon and through 
green meadows softly shaded by elm trees 
and vocal with song of thrush and cawing of 
rooks, will bring you to Britford church, a 
relic of the fourteenth century, and notable 
to the Shakespeare antiquary as containing 
the tomb of that Duke of Buckingham whom 
King Richard the Third, with such sanguinary 
precipitation, sends to the block, alike in his- 
tory and play. The tomb is a low, rec- 
tangular structure, covered by a flat stone, 
and it stands against the north wall of the 
chancel. Its sides are richly chased with 
figures and symbols of saints, and over it 



46 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

impend a carved arch and cross, while beneath 
the arch, upon a brass plate, appears the 
inscription: "Henricus Stafford, Dux Buck- 
ingham, decapitatus apud Salisbury, 1 Ric. 
III., A. D. 1483." Doubt has been cast upon 
the authenticity of that burial, — it being 
alleged that the remains of the Duke were 
conveyed to London and buried at Gray- 
friars; but, since at that time Lionel Wood- 
ville, brother-in-law of the Duke, was Bishop 
of Salisbury, it seems not unlikely that the 
interment would have been made by him, 
speedily and without ostentation, near to his 
episcopal seat. In Britford, at any rate, stands 
the tomb, reputed to be that of Buckingham, 
and as I think of it I see again the silent 
church, the sunlight streaming in colored rays 
upon the chancel floor, the mural tablets and 
the vacant pews, while upon the walls outside 
there is a faint rustle of ivy leaves, and all 
is peace. More than four hundred years have 
passed since that ambitious, scheming, unlucky 
nobleman was suddenly laid low by the 
dangerous monarch against whom he had 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 47 

raised his rebellious hand, yet in the fresh 
vitality of Shakespeare's page it seems but a 
thing of yesterday. In that tomb are the 
ashes of as proud an ambition as ever filled 
the breast of man, and in that tomb is buried 
the key to a terrible mystery, — the historic 
secret of Richard's reign: for Buckingham 
aspired to wear the crown of England, and 
Buckingham, there is reason to believe, knew 
the truth about the Princes in the Tower. 
They show you, in the Market Place of Salis- 
bury, a building that stands nearly upon the 
spot where the Duke was beheaded, — a build- 
ing situated on the north side of the square, 
near St. John's Street, and now devoted to 
trade. There, in King Richard's time, stood 
the Blue Boar Inn, and the yard of that inn 
was the place of the execution. 

To visit Salisbury is to visit Stonehenge, 
and on the drive to Stonehenge the traveller 
will not omit to pause both at Old Sarum 
and at Amesbury. The former is only an 
earthwork now, but its massive heights 
abundantly exemplify the formidable char- 



48 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

acter of ancient fortifications, and on its 
breezy slopes the long grass ripples in the 
wind, and myriads of buttercups brighten the 
green meadow with a sheen of gold. Close by 
there is an old habitation called the Castle 
Inn, and if you are in quest of a refuge from 
the ills and worries of conventional life, I 
know not where you could more certainly find 
it than in that quaint dwelling, — with all of 
Old Sarum for your pleasure ground, and 
with the distant spire of Salisbury Cathedral, 
towering, noble and clear, on the southern 
horizon, for your silent monitor, pointing to 
heaven. In Amesbury once stood the nunnery, 
dear to the lover of Tennyson's "Idylls of the 
King" as the haven and last refuge of poor 
Guinevere, in her shame, remorse, and peni- 
tence. Nothing now remains of it, but you 
will see, in the church wall, a remnant of the 
ancient ecclesiastical building, and, entering the 
park of Sir Edmund Antrobus, you will obtain 
a glimpse of fields whereon, perhaps, 
Guinevere may have wandered, and of the 
sequestered Avon on which her sad gaze may 




x .2 .-5* "" *" *3 






« • -2 " 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 49 

many a time have rested, in those sad years 
before she drifted away, "to where, beyond 
these voices, there is peace." The ancient 
nunnery was converted into a dwelling by 
Somerset, the Protector, and afterward it 
passed through various hands and suffered 
many changes. The Duke of Queensberry 
owned it, in Queen Anne's time, and the poet 
Gay, signally befriended by the sprightly 
Duchess of Queensberry, was a frequent visitor 
there, and there he composed "The Beggar's 
Opera." I saw the stone room called Gay's 
Cave, which is built into a high bank and so 
placed as to form the central feature of a hill- 
side terrace that takes the shape of a diamond. 
That was the genial poet's study, and as he 
looked forth from it he would behold a broad 
vista of lawn, diversified with brilliant flowers 
and with shade-trees that were the growth of 
centuries, the tall columns, bold capitals, and 
classic front of a stately mansion that was 
the home of his friends, and, more near, the 
limpid waters of the Avon, brown in the 
shallows, rippling beneath a lovely rustic 



50 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

bridge and sleeping in sun and shadow at his 
feet. 

The visitor to Stonehenge commonly finds 
the stones surrounded with carriages and over- 
run with picnics, while in the centre is posted 
an expounder with a model. The drive 
thither, by day, is one of exquisite beauty, 
for it extends over the long, breezy reaches 
of Salisbury Plain, through fields of golden 
grain, and scarlet poppy, and long grass 
that sways and trembles underneath the cloud- 
shadows, like the surges of the sea: but 
Stonehenge, if you would truly feel its mys- 
tery, should be seen under the cold light of 
stars, when the night wind is whispering 
through its weird cluster of huge haunted 
stones, when no human being else is present, 
and when nothing comes between your soul 
and heaven. Once, in that way, I saw the 
Druid Temple, — if such indeed it be, — and 
the spirit of dread that is within it was 
revealed. Being in Salisbury, on an autumn 
evening, long ago, it occurred to me that a 
night visit to Stonehenge would provide a 



SALISBURY AND STONEHENGE 51 

novel and interesting experience. Salisbury 
Plain had not then been occupied, as now it 
is, by a military encampment, and the stones 
had not been encircled, as now they are, by 
a barbed wire fence. The country-side was 
bleak and lonely, and as I drove away from 
the town a chill wind, sweeping over the wide 
moorland, deepened the sense of desolation 
that such a scene would naturally impart. 
After a long drive, halting the carriage about 
two hundred yards from the Stones, I walked 
on and entered the magic circle alone, 
remaining there for an hour, in meditation. 
There was no moon, and in the dim star- 
light the ghostly pillars seemed at once more 
huge and more numerous than they truly are. 
At all times strange, the place then was 
more than ever inscrutable. For probably 
two thousand years, or more, the suns 
and the storms have beat upon those grim 
memorials of a race and a life to the present 
age completely unknown. Was Stonehenge 
a shrine of worship, or a sepulchre, or both? 
Were human beings there sacrificed to Pagan 



52 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

gods, and did the central altar stone stream 
with human blood? What sombre processions 
of fierce warriors or stern, implacable priests 
have passed through those frowning avenues, 
and what solemn or grisly rites have there 
been performed! Conjecture is baffled in the 
contemplation of those relics; but if you muse 
among them in loneliness and night you will 
be conscious, as perhaps you never were 
before, of the haunting influence of mysterious 
antiquity and the awe that accompanies a 
sense of spiritual forces, present though unseen. 



III. 

HAUNTS OF MOORE. 

It is a peaceful, slumberous time in August, 
the first month of the English autumn. The 
scarlet discs of the poppies and the red and 
white blooms of the clover, together with wild- 
flowers of many hues, bespangle the lea, while 
the air is rich with fragrance of lime-trees and 
of new-mown hay. Busy, sagacious rooks, fat 
and bold, wing their way, in darkling clusters, 
bent on forage and mischief. There is a chill 
in the air, and the brimming rivers, dark and 
smoothly flowing through the opulent, culti- 
vated, park-like region of Wiltshire, shine with 
a cold gleam. In many fields the hay is cut 
and stacked: in others men, and often women, 
are tossing it, to dry, in the reluctant, inter- 
mittent, bleak sunshine. The sky is now as 
blue as the deep sea, and now ominous with 

53 



54 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

great drifting masses of slate-colored cloud. 
There are moments of beautiful radiance by 
day, and in some hours of the night the moon 
shines forth in pensive glory. It is a time 
of exquisite loveliness, a fitting time for a 
visit to the last home and the last resting 
place of the poet of loveliness and love, 
Thomas Moore. 

When Moore first went to London, a young 
author seeking to launch his earliest writings 
upon the stream of contemporary literature, 
he crossed from Dublin to Bristol, and then 
travelled to the capital by way of Bath and 
Devizes, and, as he crossed several times, he 
must soon have gained familiarity with that 
part of the country. He did not, however, 
settle in Wiltshire until some years afterward. 
His first lodging in London was a front room, 
up two flights of stairs, at No. 44 George 
Street, Portman Square. He subsequently 
lived at No. 46 Wigmore Street, Cavendish 
Square, and at No. 27 Bury Street, St. 
James's. That was in 1805. In 1810 he 
resided for a short time at No. 22 Molesworth 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 55 

Street, Dublin, but he soon returned to Eng- 
land. One of his homes, after his marriage 
with Elizabeth Dyke, "Bessie," the sister of 
the great actress, Mary Duff (1794-1857), was 
in Brompton, London. In the spring of 1812 
he settled at Kegworth, but a year later he 
removed to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, 
Derbyshire. "I am now as you wished," he 
wrote to Power, the music-publisher, July 1, 
1813, "within twenty-four hours' drive of 
town." In 1817 he occupied a cottage near 
the foot of Muswell Hill, at Hornsey, Middle- 
sex, but after he lost his daughter, Barbara, 
who died there, the place became distressful 
to him and he left it. In the latter part of 
September that year, the time of their afflic- 
tion, Moore and his "Bessie" were guests of 
Lady Donegal, at No. 56 Davies Street, 
Berkeley Square, London. Then, November 
19, 1817, they removed to Sloperton Cottage, 
at Bromham, near Devizes, and established 
their residence permanently in that place. 
Lord Lansdowne, one of the poet's earliest 
friends, was the owner of that estate, and 



56 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

doubtless he was the impulse of Moore's resort 
to it. The present Lord Lansdowne still owns 
Bowood Park, about four miles from Brom- 
ham. 

Devizes impresses a stranger with a singular, 
pleasant sense of suspended animation, as of 
beauty fallen asleep, — the sense of something 
about to happen, which never occurs. More 
peaceful it could not be, and that is its most 
alluring charm. Two of its many streets are 
remarkably wide and spacious, while others 
are narrow and crooked. Most of its habi- 
tations are low houses, built of brick, and 
only a few of them, such as the Town 
Hall and the Corn Exchange, are pretentious 
as architecture. The principal street runs 
nearly northwest and southeast. There is a 
* 'north gate" at one end of it, and a "south 
gate" at the other, but no remnant of the 
ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and 
Avon Canal, built 1794-1805, skirts the north- 
ern side of the town, and thereafter descends 
the western slope, passing through twenty- 
seven magnificent locks, within a distance of 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 57 

about two miles, — one of the longest con- 
secutive ranges of locks in England. The 
stateliest building in Devizes is the noble 
Castle, which, reared upon a massive hill, at 
once dominates the surrounding landscape and 
dignifies it. That splendid edifice, built about 
1830, stands upon the site of the ancient 
Castle of Devizes, which was reared by Roger, 
Bishop of Salisbury, in the reign of King 
Henry the First, and it resembles that 
famous original, long esteemed one of the 
most complete and admirable works of its 
kind in Europe. The old Castle was included 
in the dowry settled upon successive queens of 
England. Queen Margaret possessed it in 
the reign of King Henry the Sixth, and 
Queen Katharine possessed it in that of 
King Henry the Eighth. It figured in the 
Civil Wars, and it was then deemed the 
strongest citadel in England. The poet- 
soldier, Edmund Waller, when employed in 
the military service of the Parliament, bom- 
barded it, in 1643, and finally it was destroyed 
by order of the Roundheads. Toward the 



58 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

close of the eighteenth century its ruins were 
surmounted by a couple of snuff-mills. No 
part of the ancient fortress now survives, 
except the moat, but in its pleasant garden 
grounds fragmentary remnants can still be 
seen of its foundations and of its dungeons. 
During the rebuilding of the Castle many 
relics were unearthed, such as human bones 
and implements of war, — significant tokens 
of dark days and fatal doings long past 
and gone. In the centre of the town is a 
commodious public square, known as the 
Market-place, — a wide domain of repose, as 
I saw it, uninvaded by either vehicle or human 
being, but on each Thursday the scene of 
the weekly market for cattle and corn, and 
of the loquacious industry of the cheap- jack 
and the quack. On one side of it is the old 
Bear Hotel, memorable as the birthplace of 
Sir Thomas Lawrence, the artist (1769-1830). 
In the centre are two works of art, — one a 
fountain, the other a cross. The latter, a 
fine fabric of Gothic architecture, is embel- 
lished with thirteen pinnacles, which rise above 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 59 

an arched canopy, the covering of a statue. 
One face of the cross bears this legend: 

This Market Cross was erected by Henry, Viscount 
Sidmouth, as a memorial of his grateful attachment to 
the Borough of Devizes, of which he has been Recorder 
thirty years, and of which he was six times unanimously 
chosen a representative in Parliament. Anno Domini 
1814. 

Upon the other face appears a record 
more significant, — being indicative equally of 
credulity and a frugal mind, and being 
freighted with tragic import unmatched since 
the Bible narrative of Ananias and Sapphira. 
It reads thus: 

The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail 
themselves of the stability of this building to trans- 
mit to future times the record of an awful event which 
occurred in this market-place in the year 1753, hoping 
that such a record may serve as a salutary warning 
against the danger of impiously invoking the Divine 
vengeance, or of calling on the holy name of God to 
conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud. 

On Thursday, the 25th January, 1753, Ruth Pierce, 
of Potterne, in this county, agreed, with three other 



60 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

women, to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each 
paying her due proportion toward the same. 

One of these women, in collecting the several 
quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded 
of Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanted to make 
good the amount. 

Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, 
and said, "She wished she might drop down dead if 
she had not." 

She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the 
consternation of the surrounding multitude, she in- 
stantly fell down and expired, having the money con- 
cealed in her hand. 



That is not the only tragic incident in the 
history of the Market-place of Devizes; for 
in 1538 a poor tailor, named John Bent, of 
the neighboring village of Urchfont, was 
burnt at the stake, in that square, for his 
avowed disbelief of the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation. 

An important institution of Devizes is the 
Wilts County Museum, in Long Street, 
devoted to the natural history and the 
archaeology of Wiltshire. The library con- 
tains a sumptuous collection of Wiltshire 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 61 

books, and the museum is rich in geological 
specimens, — richer even than the excellent 
museum of Salisbury, for, in addition to other 
treasures, it includes the famous Stourhead 
collection, made by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 
being relics from the ancient British and 
Saxon barrows on the Wiltshire downs, 
described by Sir Richard, in his book called 
"Antient Wilts." Its cinerary and culinary 
urns are fine and numerous. The Wilts 
County Museum is fortunate in its curator, 
B. Howard Cunnington, Esq., of Rowde, — an 
indefatigable student and thorough antiquarian. 
An interesting church in Devizes is that of 
St. John, the Norman tower of which is a 
relic of the days of King Henry the Second, 
a vast, grim structure, with a circular turret 
on one corner of it. Eastward of this church 
is a long, lovely avenue of trees, and around 
it lies a large burial-place, remarkable for the 
excellence of the sod and for the number 
visible of those heavy, gray, oblong masses 
of stone which appear to have obtained great 
public favor, as tombs, about the time of Crom- 



62 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

well. In the centre of the churchyard stands 
a monolith, inscribed with these remarkable 
words : 

Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy. — This 
monument, as a solemn monitor to Young People to 
remember their Creator in the days of their youth, 
was erected by subscription. — In memory of the sud- 
den and awful end of Robert Merrit and his wife, 
Eliz. Tiley, her sister, Martha Carter, and Josiah 
Denham, who were drowned, in the flower of their 
youth, in a pond, near this town, called Drews, on 
Sunday evening, the 30th of June, 1751, and are 
together underneath entombed. 

In one corner of the churchyard I came 
upon a cross, bearing a simple legend, far 
more touching, though not void of accidental 
humor: 

In Memoriam 

Robert Samuel Thornley 

Died, August 5, 1871. Aged 48 years. 

For fourteen years surgeon to the poor of Devizes. 

There shall be no more pain. 

And over still another sleeper was written, 
upon a flat stone, low in the ground: 




THOMAS MOORE 
1779-1852 



Enchanter of Erin whose magic has bound us. 

HOLMES. 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 63 

Loving, beloved, in all relations true, 
Exposed to follies, but subdued by few: 
Reader, reflect, and copy if you can 
The simple virtues of this honest man. 

Nobody is in haste in Devizes, and the 
pilgrim who seeks for peace could not do 
better than to tarry there. The city bell, 
which officially strikes the hours, is subdued 
and pensive, and although reinforced with 
chimes, it seems ever to speak under its breath. 
The church-bell, however, rings long, vigor- 
ously, and with much melodious clangor, as 
though the local sinners were more than com- 
monly hard of hearing. Near to the church 
of St. John are some quaint almshouses. One 
of them was founded before 1207, as a hospital 
for lepers, and it is thought that one of 
them was built of stone which remained after 
the erection of the church. Those almshouses 
are now governed by the Mayor and Corpora- 
tion of Devizes, but perhaps formerly they 
were under the direct control of the Crown. 
(See Tanner's "Nolitia.") There are seven 
endowments, one dating back to 1641, and 



64 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the houses are, to this day, occupied by widows, 
recommended by the churchwardens of St. 
Mary's and St. John's. An old inhabitant of 
Devizes, named Bancroft, left a sum of money 
to insure for himself a singular memorial 
service, — that the bells of St. John's church 
should be solemnly tolled on the day of his 
birth, and rung merrily on that of his death, 
and that service is duly performed, every year. 
Devizes is a fit place for the survival of 
quaint customs, and those serve to mark, 
very pleasantly, its peculiar, interesting char- 
acter. The Town Crier, who is a member of 
the Corporation, walks abroad arrayed in a 
helmet and a uniform of brilliant scarlet, — 
glories of apparel that are worn by no other 
Town Crier in the kingdom, excepting the 
Crier of York. 

From Devizes to the village of Bromham, 
a distance of about four miles, the walk is 
delightful. Much of the path is between green 
hedges and is embowered by elms. The exit 
from the town is by Northgate and along the 
Chippenham road, — which, like all the roads 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 65 

in this neighborhood, is smooth, hard, and 
white. A little way out of Devizes, going 
northwest, this road lies through a deep cut 
in the chalk-stone and so winds downhill into 
the plain. At intervals you come upon 
sweetly pretty specimens of the English 
thatch-roof cottage. Hay-fields, pastures, and 
market-gardens extend on every hand. East- 
ward, far off, are visible the hills of West- 
bury, upon which, here and there, the copses 
are lovely, and upon one of which, cut in the 
rock, is the figure of a colossal white horse — 
said to have been fashioned by the Saxons. 
The White Horse was made by removing the 
turf in such a way as to show the white chalk 
beneath. The tradition is that this was done 
by command of King Alfred, in Easter week, 
878, to signalize his victory over the Danes, 
at Oetlandune, or Eddington, at the foot of 
the hill. Upon the top of that hill there is 
the outline of an ancient Roman camp. Soon 
the road winds over a ridge and you pass 
through the little red village of Rowde. The 
walk can be shortened by a cut across the 



66 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

fields, and that, indeed, is found the prettiest 
part of the journey, — for then the path lies 
through gardens, and through the centre or 
along the margin of the wheat, which waves 
in the strong wind and sparkles in the bright 
sunshine and is everywhere tenderly touched 
with the scarlet of the poppy and with hues 
of other wild-flowers. 

In a field through which I passed, as the 
spire of Bromham church came into view, a 
surface more than three hundred yards square 
was blazing with wild-flowers, white, gold, 
crimson, purple, and blue, upon a ground of 
vivid green, so that to look upon it was almost 
to be dazzled, while the air that floated over it 
was scented with honeysuckle. You can see 
the delicate spire and the low tower of Moore's 
church some time before you come to it, and 
in some respects the prospect is not unlike that 
of Shakespeare's church at Stratford. A fitter 
place for a poet's sepulchre it would be hard 
to find. No spot could be more harmonious 
than this one is with the romantic spirit of 
Moore's poetry. Bromham village consists of 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 67 

a few red brick buildings, scattered along 
irregular little lanes, on a ridge overlooking 
a valley. Amid those humble homes stands the 
church, like a shepherd keeping his flock. A 
part of it is very old, and all of it, richly 
weather-stained and delicately browned with 
faded moss, is beautiful. Upon the tower and 
along the south side the fantastic gargoyles are 
much decayed. The building is crucial in shape. 
The chancel window, of course, faces eastward, 
while the window at the end of the nave 
faces west, — the latter being a memorial to 
Moore. At the southeast corner of the church 
is the Lady Chapel, belonging to the Bayntun 
family, and in it are suspended various frag- 
ments of old armor, and in the centre of it, 
recumbent on a dark tomb, is a grim-visaged 
knight, clad in his mail, beautifully sculptured, 
in marble that looks like yellow ivory. Vandal 
visitors have shamefully marred that fine 
work, by cutting and scratching their names 
upon it. Other tombs are adjacent, with in- 
scriptions that include the names of Sir Edward 
Bayntun, 1679, and Lady Anne Wilmot, elder 



68 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

daughter and co-heiress of John, Earl of 
Rochester, who, successively, was the wife of 
Henry Bayntun and Francis Greville, and who 
died in 1703. The window at the end of the 
nave is a simple but striking composition, in 
stained glass, richer and nobler than is com- 
monly seen in a country church. It consists 
of twenty-one lights, of which five are lancet 
shafts, side by side, these being surmounted 
with smaller lancets, forming a cluster at the 
top of the arch. In the centre is the figure 
of Jesus, and around Him are the Apostles. 
The coloring is true and beautiful. Across 
the base of the window appear these words, 
in the glass: "This window is placed in this 
church by the combined subscriptions of two 
hundred persons who honor the memory of 
the poet of all circles and the idol of 
his own, Thomas Moore." Beneath this win- 
dow, in a little pew in the corner of the 
church, I joined in the service, and medi- 
tated, throughout a long sermon, on the lovely 
life and character and the gentle, abiding 
influence of the poet whose hallowed grave 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 69 

and beloved memory make this place a per- 
petual shrine. 

Moore is buried in the churchyard. An 
iron fence encloses his tomb, which is at the 
base of the church tower, in an angle formed 
by the tower and the chancel, on the north 
side of the building. Not more than twenty 
tombs are visible on this side of the church, 
and these appear upon a level lawn, green, 
sparkling, and as soft as velvet. On three 
sides the churchyard is enclosed by a low wall, 
and on the fourth by a dense hedge of glisten- 
ing holly. Great trees are all around the 
church, but not too near. A massive yew 
stands darkly at one corner. Chestnuts and 
elms blend their branches in fraternal embrace. 
Close by the poet's grave a huge beech uprears 
its dome of fruited boughs and rustling 
foliage. The sky was blue, except for a few 
straggling masses of feathery, grayish cloud. 
Not a human creature was anywhere to be 
seen while I stood in this sacred spot, and 
no sound disturbed the restful stillness, save 
the faint whisper of the wind in the lofty 



70 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

tree-tops and the low twitter of birds in their 
hidden nests. I thought of Moore's long life, 
unusually exempt from reason for reproach; 
of his sweet devotion to parents, wife, and 
children; of his pure patriotism, which scorned 
equally the blatant fustian of the demagogue 
and the frenzy of the revolutionist; of his 
fidelity in friendship; of his simplicity and 
purity in a corrupt time and amid many 
temptations; of his meekness in affliction; of 
the devout spirit that prompted his earnest 
exhortation to his wife, "Lean upon God, 
Bessie"; of many beautiful songs that he 
added to our literature, — almost every one 
of them the melodious expression of one or 
another of the elemental feelings of human 
nature; and of the obligation of gratitude 
that the world owes to his beneficent genius: 
and thus it seemed good to be in this place 
and to lay with reverent hands the white roses 
of honor and affection upon his tomb. 

On the long, low, flat stone over the poet's 
dust are inscribed the following words: 
"Anastatia Mary Moore. Born March 16, 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 71 

1813. Died March 8, 1829. Also her brother, 
John Russell Moore, who died November 23, 
1842, aged 19 years. Also their father, 
Thomas Moore, tenderly beloved by all who 
knew the goodness of his heart. The Poet 
and Patriot of his Country, Ireland. Born 
May 28, 1779. Sank to rest February 26, 
1852. Aged 72. God is Love. Also his 
wife, Bessie Moore, who died 4th September 
1865. And to the memory of their dear son, 
Thomas Lansdowne Parr Moore. Born 24th 
October 1818. Died in Africa, January 1846." 
Moore's daughter, Barbara, is buried at 
Hornsey, near London. On the stone 
that marks that spot is written, "Anne 
Jane Barbara Moore. Born January the 4th, 
1812. Died September the 18th, 1817." In 
1908 a monumental cross was placed at Moore's 
grave, inscribed, on the base, with his dates and 
the first four lines of his melodious and touch- 
ing apostrophe to the Harp of his beloved 
Ireland. 

Later, as I was gazing at St. John's, gray 
and cheerless in the gloaming, an old man 



72 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

approached me and civilly began a conversa- 
tion about the antiquity of the building and 
the eloquence of its rector. When I told him 
that I had walked to Bromham to attend the 
service there, and to see the cottage and grave 
of Moore, he presently provided me with the 
little touch of personal testimony which is 
always interesting and significant in such cir- 
cumstances. "I remember Tom Moore," he 
said; "I worked for him once, in his house, and 
I did some work once on his tomb. He was 
a little man. He spoke to us very pleasantly. 
I don't think he was a preacher. He never 
preached that I heard tell of. He was a 
poet, I believe. He was very much liked 
here. I never heard a word against him. I 
am seventy-nine years old the thirteenth of 
December, and that'll soon be here. I've had 
three wives in my time, and my third is still 
living. It's a fine old church, and there's 
figures in it of bishops, and kings, and 
queens." 

Most observers have remarked the gar- 
rulous and sometimes grotesquely humorous 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 73 

way in which senile persons prattle their 
incongruous, sporadic recollections. But — 
"How pregnant sometimes his replies are!" 
Another resident of Devizes, with whom I 
conversed, likewise remembered the poet, and 
spoke of him with feeling and respect. "My 
sister, when she was a child," he said, "was 
often at Moore's house, and he was fond of 
her. Yes, his name is remembered and hon- 
ored here. But I think that many of the 
people hereabout, the farmers, admired him 
chiefly because they thought that he wrote 
'Moore's Almanac' They used to say to him: 
'Mister Moore, please tell us what the 
weather's going to be.' " 

Northwest from Bromham church and about 
one mile away stands Sloperton Cottage, the 
last home of Moore and the house in which 
he died. A deep valley intervenes between 
the church and the cottage, but, as each is 
built upon a ridge, you readily see the one 
from the other. There is a road across the 
valley, but the more pleasant walk is along 
a pathway through the meadows and over 



74 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

several stiles, ending almost in front of the 
cottage. It is an ideal home for a poet. The 
building is made of brick, but it is so com- 
pletely enwrapped in ivy that scarcely a 
particle of its surface can be seen. It is a 
low building, with a wing and, on its main 
front, three gables; it stands in the middle 
of a garden enclosed by walls and by hedges 
of ivy; and it is embowered by trees, 
yet not so closely embowered as to be shorn 
of prospect from its windows. Flowers and 
flowering vines were blooming around it. The 
hard, white road, past its gateway, looked 
like a thread of silver between the green 
hedgerows which here, for many miles, are 
rooted in high, grassy banks, and at intervals 
are diversified with large trees. Sloperton 
Cottage is almost alone, but there are a few 
neighbors, and there is the little rustic village 
of Westbrook, about half a mile westward. 
Westward was the poet's favorite prospect. 
He loved the sunset, and from a terrace in 
his garden he habitually watched the pageant 
of the dying day. Here, for thirty-five years, 



HAUNTS OF MOORE 75 

was his peaceful, happy home. Here he 
meditated many of those gems of lyrical poetry 
that will live in the hearts of men as long 
as anything lives that ever was written. And 
here he "sank to rest," worn out by age, 
incessant labor, and many sorrows incident to 
domestic bereavement. The sun was sinking as 
I turned away from this haunt of genius and 
virtue, and, through green pastures and flower- 
spangled fields of waving grain, set forth upon 
my homeward walk. Soon there was a lovely 
peal of chimes from Bromham church tower, 
answered far off by the bells of Rowde, and 
while I descended into the darkening valley, 
Moore's tender words came singing through 
my thought: 

And so 'twill be when I am gone — 
That tuneful peal will still ring on, 
While other bards shall walk these dells 
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells! 



IV. 

BATH AND BRISTOL. 

A beautiful city, somewhat marred by the 
feverish spirit of the present day, old Bath, — 
a place of such antiquity that it has echoed 
to the tread of Roman soldiers and witnessed 
the coronation of Saxon kings, — retains many 
characteristics of its ancient glory and is 
freighted with many associations of romance 
and incentives to fancy. As long ago as 
the placid twenty- three years' reign of the 
Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius (86-161), 
it was a place of stately, elegant abodes, and 
in the eighteenth century it was, perhaps, the 
most sumptuous, aristocratic resort in Eng- 
land. Changes have, of course, occurred in 
it, even since the days of Swift, Sheridan, 
Smollett, Chesterfield, and the many other noted 
wits and beaus whose names are linked with 



BATH AND BRISTOL 77 

its history, but it still is Bath the Beautiful. 
It lies in a deep vale, on both sides of the 
Wiltshire Avon, and in the slow lapse of 
time it has crept upward, along the valley 
slopes, nearer and nearer to the hill-tops that 
formerly looked down upon it. Along the 
margins of the river many gray stone build- 
ings are mouldering in neglect, but crowds 
throng upon the causeways, tram-cars rattle 
through some of the principal streets, multi- 
tudinous vehicles roll over the pavement, and 
where of old the horn sounded a gay flourish 
and the coach came spinning in from Lon- 
don, now is heard the shriek of the steam- 
engine, rushing down the vale, with morning 
newspapers and with passengers "three hours 
from town." More than a century and a half 
has passed since the powdered, jewelled days 
of Beau Nash, — once, about 1752, "by the 
grace of impudence, King of Bath," — the old 
town is no longer the Gainsborough belle that 
it used to be, and you must yield your mind 
to fancy if you would conjure up, while walk- 
ing in its modern streets, the gay, quaint 



78 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

spectacles described in such classics as 
"Humphrey Clinker" and "The Rivals." It 
is pleasing, for the traveller, recalling the 
literary associations of Bath, to think of the 
trim figure of elegant Sir Lucius O'Trigger 
loitering in the South Parade, waiting for 
Lucy, or bluff, choleric Sir Anthony Absolute 
gazing, with imperious condescension, on the 
sparkling galaxy of the Pump Room, 
or Acres, in his curl-papers and finery, 
speeding his "four-in-hand" from the country, 
"with a tail of dust as long as Pall 
Mall," or Mrs. Malaprop, rigid with decorum, 
in her Bath chair, or Ly&ia, languishing for 
her merry, scapegrace lover and sighing over 
the leaves of Sir Anthony's "evergreen tree 
of diabolical knowledge." 

The Bath chairs, sometimes pulled by 
donkeys and sometimes trundled by men, are 
among the most harmonious, representative 
relics now visible in the old resort of fashion 
and pleasure. At the foot of Gascoigne Place 
there is a building before which the traveller 
pauses with interest, because upon its front 




BATH ABBEY— WEST FRONT 



"Each niche, well filled trilli monument and bust, 
Shows how Jiiilli waters serve to lay the dust." 

OLD EPIGIIAM. 



BATH AND BRISTOL 79 

he can read the legend, engraved on a white 
marble slab, that "In this house lived the 
celebrated Beau Nash, and here he died, 
February, 1761." It is an odd structure, con- 
sisting of two stories and an attic, the front 
being of the monotonous stucco much used 
on buildings in the time of the Regency. 
In the historic Pump Room, placed aloft in 
an alcove at the east end, still stands the 
life-size effigy of Beau Nash, as it stood when 
that exquisite dandy set the fashions, regu- 
lated the customs, and was, indeed, "King of 
Bath"; but the busts of Newton and Pope, 
that formerty stood on either side of that 
statue, stand there no more, — except in the 
fancy of gazers who recall the old epigram 
which was suggested by that singular group: 

This statue placed these busts between 

Gives satire all its strength; 
Wisdom and Wit are little seen, 

But Folly at full length! 

Folly, though, is a word that conveys a 
different meaning to different minds. Douglas 



80 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Jerrold made an ingenious, effective, farcical 
play, relative to Beau Nash, in which that 
magnate of fashion is depicted as anything 
but a fool. 

The most conspicuous and interesting build- 
ing in Bath is the Abbey, which, begun in 
1405 and completed in 1606, occupies a 
prominent position in the principal square of 
the city, and equally attracts and rewards the 
curiosity and interest of the visitor. It is 
indeed a superb church. Its great door, of 
carved oak, is magnificent, and the west front 
of it is very noble. A surprising feature 
of Bath Abbey is its mural record of the 
dead that are entombed beneath or around 
it. Well might Sir Lucius have been told 
that "there is snug lying in the Abbey"! 
Much of the interior surface of the walls is 
covered with monumental emblems and 
memorial slabs, and, after a service there, — 
like Cap'n Cuttle, after the wedding of Mr. 
Dombey and Edith, — I "pervaded the body 
of the church and read the epitaphs," being 
solicitous to find the resting-place of the once 



BATH AND BRISTOL 81 

renowned actor James Quin (1693-1766), 
who was buried there. The tablet to his 
memory was formerly in the chancel, but now 
it is obscurely placed in a porch, at the north 
corner of the building, on the outer wall of 
the sanctuary. It presents the head of the 
actor, carved in white marble, and set against 
a black slab. Beneath is the record: "Ob. 
MDCCLXVI. JEtat. LXXIIL," and then 
follows an epitaph, written by David Gar- 
rick. At the base are those conventional 
dramatic emblems, the mask and dagger. 
As a portrait this medallion of Quin gives 
evidence of scrupulous fidelity to nature. The 
head is shown, as in life, with the full wig of 
the period. The features are regular and fine, 
and they indicate an austere character. Quin, 
biographically, has been designated the last 
great declaimer of the old English school 
of acting, a school discomfited and almost 
obliterated by Garrick. These are the words 
that Garrick wrote (obviously imitating Ham- 
lets Yorick speech), to commemorate his van- 
quished rival, and, if their purport be true, 



82 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Quin, surely, was something more than a mere 
pompous rhetorician: 

That tongue, which set the table in a roar, 

And charmed the public ear, is heard no more; 

Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, 

Which spoke, before the tongue, what Shakespeare writ ; 

Cold is that hand which, living, was stretched forth, 

At friendship's call, to succor modest worth. 

Here lies James Quin. Deign, reader, to be taught, 

Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought, 

In Nature's happiest mould however cast, 

To this complexion thou must come at last. 

Any printed reminder of mortality's strong 
hand is superfluous in Bath, for the visitor 
almost continuously sees deformed and other- 
wise afflicted persons, resident there "to take 
the waters." For rheumatic sufferers the 
place is a paradise, as also it is for wealthy 
persons who love luxury. The poet Landor 
said that the only two cities of Europe in which 
he could live were Bath and Florence, — but, 
happily, tastes differ. When you have walked 
in Milsom Street, Great Pulteney Street, 
Lansdowne Crescent and Victoria Park, 




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BATH AND BRISTOL 83 

sailed upon the Avon, observed the Abbey 
within and without, climbed Beechen Cliff for 
a view of the city and the Avon valley, and 
taken the baths, you will have had a sufficiently 
informative experience of modern Bath. The 
principal luxury of the place is a swimming- 
tank of mineral water, about forty feet long 
by twenty broad, and five feet deep, a tepid 
pool of refreshing potency, and the chief 
curiosity is a Roman Bath, eighty-one feet 
long and thirty-nine feet wide, discovered, 
exhumed, and renovated in 1885, after having 
remained buried for many centuries. 

The literary associations of Bath are rich 
and various. The poets and wits of Queen 
Anne's time liked the place and frequented it. 
Horace Walpole heard the famous Wesley 
preach there, in 1766, and thought him "as 
evident an actor as Garrick." Gibbon, great- 
est of historians, sought freedom and pleasure 
there, when, in his frolicsome youthful days, 
he broke away from Oxford. Dr. Johnson 
walked the streets of Bath, in 1776, and 
Boswell went there to visit him. Frances 



84 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Burney and Jane Austen were, at different 
times, residents of the gay city, and each has 
peopled it with representative creatures of 
fiction, true types of the characters and 
manners of their respective times. Scott lived 
there, for a while, when a boy, and he some- 
where writes that he always remembered with 
pleasure the fine Abbey, the yellow Avon, 
and the statue of Neptune which stood at 
the Ferry leading to Spring Gardens. Landor, 
when age was advancing on him, watched the 
lovely sunset there, in April 1854, and, as it 
faded, thought of the many friends of his 
youth who had as suddenly and as sadly gone 
out. Many other shining names might be 
mentioned, of authors who found delight in 
Bath and helped to adorn its story. Rich also 
in literary association is Bath's opulent neigh- 
bor, the old city of Bristol, — birthplace of "the 
marvellous boy," Chatterton, and of that noble 
representative man of letters, Robert Southey. 
In a stone chamber of the tower of St. Mary 
Redclyffe Church,— built in 1292,-1 saw the 
old oak chests, once filled with black letter 



BATH AND BRISTOL 85 

parchments but empty now, in which Chatter- 
ton, pursuant to his ingenious plan of impos- 
ture, "discovered" the Canynge and Rowley 
Manuscripts. Jane and Anne Porter, the 
novelists, Hannah More, and Mary Robinson, 
the actress, — the lovely, unfortunate "Perdita," 
— were natives of Bristol. Savage, the poet, 
died there. Coleridge and Southey married 
sisters, named Fricker, resident there, and 
in the lovely village of Clevedon, near Bristol, 
the pilgrim can see Myrtle Cottage, once the 
residence of Coleridge, at which, it is recorded, 
the untimely arrival of "a person from 
Porlock" compelled him to leave unfinished his 
imaginative, sweetly musical poem "Kubla 
Khan." In Clevedon stands the old church 
in which was entombed the dust of Arthur 
Hallam, inspiration of Tennyson's "In Memo- 
riam." While I was in Bristol and its 
neighborhood my thoughts were concerned more 
with Southey than with any other celebrity of 
the past whose name is connected with that 
place. The brilliant but cruel satire of Byron 
has largely contributed to the obscuration of 



86 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Southey's fame. It is not to be denied, either, 
that some of his writings are ponderous and 
therefore difficult of perusal; but in faculty and 
fertility of fancy his poem of "The Curse of 
Kehama" ranks next to Pope's supremely 
fanciful "Rape of the Lock," and, at their best, 
his works are characterized by learning, thought, 
invention, religious feeling, morality, purity, 
refinement, chivalry, eloquence, and sweetness. 



V. 

THE FAITHFUL CITY. 

Worcester, called by King Charles the First, 
"The Faithful City," is closely associated with 
the story of the fortunes and the wars of the 
Stuarts, and the moment you enter it your 
mind is filled with the presence of Charles 
the Martyr, Charles the Merry, Prince Rupert, 
and Oliver Cromwell. From the top of Red 
Hill and the margin of Perry wood, Cromwell 
looked down over the ancient walled city which 
he had beleaguered. Upon the summit of the 
great tower of Worcester Charles and Rupert 
held their last council of war. Here was lost, 
September 3, 1651, the battle that made the 
Merry Monarch a hunted fugitive in exile. 
With profound interest I have rambled on 
those heights, traversed the battlefield, walked 
in the Cathedral and attended divine service 

87 



88 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

there; revelled in the antiquities of the Edgar 
Tower, roamed through most of the streets, 
traced all that can be traced of the old wall, 
■ — there is little remaining of it now, and no 
part that can be walked upon, — examined the 
porcelain works, for which Worcester is famous, 
viewed several of its old churches and its one 
theatre, in Angel Street, entered its Guildhall, 
where are preserved a fine piece of artillery 
and nine suits of black armor that were left 
by King Charles the Second when he fled 
from Worcester, paced the dusty, empty 
Trinity Hall, now abandoned and condemned 
to demolition, where once Queen Elizabeth was 
feasted, and visited the old Commandery, — a 
rare piece of antiquity, remaining from the 
tenth century, — wherein the Duke of Hamilton 
died, of his wounds, after Cromwell's "crown- 
ing mercy," and beneath the floor of which 
he was laid in a temporary grave. 

In the Edgar Tower at Worcester is kept 
the original of the marriage-bond that was 
given by Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, 
of Shottery, as a preliminary to the marriage 



THE FAITHFUL CITY 89 

of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, 
It is a long, narrow strip of parchment, glazed 
and framed. Two seals of pale-colored wax 
were originally attached to it, dependent by 
strings, but these have been detached. The 
handwriting is obscure. There are but few 
persons who can read the handwriting in old 
documents of this kind, and thousands of such 
documents exist in the church-archives, and 
elsewhere, in England, — documents that have 
never been examined. The bond is for <£40, 
and is a guarantee that there was no impedi- 
ment to the marriage. It is dated November 
28, 1582; its text authorizes the wedding, after 
only once calling the banns in church, and it 
is supposed that the marriage took place imme- 
diately, since the first child of it, Susanna 
Shakespeare, was baptized in the Shakespeare 
Church at Stratford, May 26, 1583. No 
registration of the marriage has been found, 
but that is not a proof that it does not exist. 
The law prescribed that three parishes, within 
the residential diocese, should be designated 
in the license, in any one of which the marriage 



90 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

might be solemnized, but custom permitted the 
contracting parties, when they had complied 
with this requirement, to be married in whatever 
parish, within the diocese, they might prefer. 
The three parishes supposed to have been named 
are Stratford, Bishopton, and Luddington. 
The registers of two of them have been searched, 
but searched in vain. The register of the third, 
— that of Luddington, which is near Shottery, 
about three miles southwest of Stratford, — was 
destroyed, long ago, in a fire that burnt down 
Luddington church, and conjecture assumes 
that Shakespeare was married at Luddington. 
It may be so, but until every old church 
register in the ancient diocese of Worcester 
has been examined, the quest of the registra- 
tion of his marriage ought not to be abandoned. 
Richard Savage, the antiquarian, has long been 
occupied with this inquiry, and has transcribed 
several of the old church registers in the vicinity 
of Stratford. Rev. Thomas Procter Wadley, 
another antiquary, of learning and incessant 
industry, long participated in that labor. The 
coveted discovery of the entry of the marriage 



THE FAITHFUL CITY 91 

of William and Anne remains unmade, but one 
valuable result of those investigations is the 
disclosure that many of the names used in 
Shakespeare's works are names of persons 
who were actually resident in Warwickshire in 
his time. (An instructive article by Mr. John 
Taylor, on "Local Shakespearean Names," 
based on and incorporative of some of the 
researches of Mr. Wadley, was published in 
"The London Athenaeum," February 9, 1889. 
Mr. Wadley died, at Pershore, April 4, 1895, 
and was buried in Bidford churchyard, on April 
10.) It has pleased various sensation-mongers 
to ascribe the authorship of Shakespeare's writ- 
ings to Francis Bacon. That could only be 
done by ignoring much positive evidence, — 
among the rest the evidence of Ben Jonson, who 
knew Shakespeare personally, and who has left 
a written statement of the manner in which 
Shakespeare composed his plays. Effrontery 
was to be expected from advocates of the 
preposterous Bacon theory; but when they 
have ignored the positive evidence, the internal 
evidence, and the circumstantial evidence, they 



92 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

have still a serious obstacle to surmount. The 
man who wrote Shakespeare's plays knew War- 
wickshire as it could only be known by a native 
of it, and there is no testimony that it was 
so known by Francis Bacon. 

With reference to the Shakespeare marriage- 
bond and the other records that are kept in 
the Edgar Tower at Worcester, it should be 
said that they ought to be protected with the 
scrupulous care to which such treasures are 
entitled. The Tower, — a venerable relic, being 
an ancient gate of the monastery, dating back 
to the time of King John, — affords an 
appropriate receptacle for those documents, 
but it would not withstand fire, and it does 
not, or did not, when last I saw it, contain a 
fire-proof chamber or a safe. The Shakespeare 
marriage-bond was taken from the floor of 
a closet, together with a number of dusty 
books, and I was permitted to hold and 
examine it. From another dusty closet an 
attendant extricated a manuscript diary, kept 
by William Lloyd, Bishop of Worcester, 1627- 
1717, and by his man-servant, for several years, 



THE FAITHFUL CITY 93 

about the beginning of the reign of Queen 
Anne, in which are many quaint, humorous 
entries, valuable to the student of history and 
manners. In still another closet, having the 
appearance of a rubbish-bin, I saw heaps of 
old parchment, — a mass of antique registry 
that it would require continuous labor during 
five or six years to examine, decipher, and 
classify. Worcester is especially rich in old 
records, and it is not impossible that the miss- 
ing clew to Shakespeare's marriage may yet 
be found in that old Cathedral city. 

Worcester is rich also in an ample library, 
which, by the kindness of the custodian of it, 
Mr. Hooper, I was allowed to explore, high 
up beneath the roof of the lovely Cathedral. 
That collection of books, numbering about 
five thousand volumes, consists mostly of folios, 
many of which were printed in France. It is 
kept in a long, low, oak-timbered room, the 
triforium of the south aisle of the nave. The 
approach is by a circular stone staircase. In 
an anteroom to the library I saw a part of 
the ancient north door of the church, — a 



94 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

fragment dating back to the time of Bishop 
Wakefield, 1386, — to which is affixed a piece 
of the skin of a human being. The tradition 
is that a Dane committed sacrilege, by stealing 
the sanctus bell from the high altar, and was 
thereupon flayed alive, for his crime, the skin 
of him having been then fastened to the 
Cathedral door. In the library are magnificent 
editions of Aristotle and other classic authors, 
the works of fathers of the church, a beautiful 
illuminated manuscript of Wyckliffe's New 
Testament, written on vellum, 1381, and 
several books from the press of Caxton and 
that of Wynken de Worde. This library, 
which is for the use of the clergy of the 
diocese of Worcester, was founded by Bishop 
Carpenter, in 1461, and originally it was stored 
in the chapel of the charnel-house. 

Reverting to the subject of old documents, 
a useful word can perhaps be said about 
the registers in Trinity Church at Stratford, 
— documents which, in a spirit of disparage- 
ment, have sometimes been flouted as "copies." 
That sort of levity in the discussion of 




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THE FAITHFUL CITY 95 

Shakespearean subjects is not unnatural in 
days when "cranks" are allowed freely to 
besmirch the memory of Shakespeare, in their 
foolish advocacy of wild theories as to the 
authorship of his works. I have explored 
the quaint pages of the Stratford Registers. 
Those records are contained in twenty-two 
volumes. They begin with the first year of 
Queen Elizabeth, 1558, and they close, in 
the old parchment form, in 1812. From 1558 
to 1600 the entries were made in a paper 
book, of the quarto form, still occasion- 
ally to be found in ancient parish churches of 
England. In 1599 an order-in-council was 
issued, commanding that those entries should 
be copied into parchment volumes, for their 
better preservation. This was done. The 
parchment volumes, which were freely shown 
to me by William Butcher, the parish clerk of 
Stratford, (that good man died, February 20, 
1895, aged 66, and was buried in Stratford 
Cemetery), date back to 1600. The hand- 
writing of the copied portion, covering the 
period from 1558 to 1600, is careful and uni- 



96 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

form. Each page is certified, as to its 
accuracy, by the vicar and the churchwardens. 
After 1600 the handwritings vary. In the 
register of marriages a new handwriting 
appears, on September 17 that year, and in 
the registers of baptism and burial it appears 
on September 20. The sequence of marriages 
is complete until 1756, that of baptisms and 
burials until 1812, when, in each case, a book 
of printed forms comes into use. The entry 
of Shakespeare's baptism, April 26, 1564, from 
which it is inferred that he was born on 
April 23, is extant as a certified copy from 
the earlier paper book. The entry of Shake- 
speare's burial is the original entry, made in 
the original register. The disposition that was 
made of the original paper book containing the 
record of the period from 1558 to 1600 is 
unknown. 

It has been suggested by an American 
writer that Shakespeare's widow, — seven years 
his senior at the beginning of their married 
life, and therefore fifty-nine 5^ears old when 
he died, — subsequently contracted another 



THE FAITHFUL CITY 97 

marriage. Mrs. Shakespeare survived her 
husband seven years, dying, August 6, 1623, 
at the age of sixty-six. The entry in the 
Stratford register of burial contains, August 
8, 1623, the names of "Mrs. Shakespeare" and 
"Anna uxor Richard James." Those two 
names, written one above the other, are con- 
nected by a bracket, on the left side, and 
this has been supposed to be evidence that 
Shakespeare's widow married again. The use 
of the bracket could not possibly mislead any- 
body possessing the faculty of clear vision. 
When two or more persons were either bap- 
tized or buried on the same day, the parish 
clerk, in making the requisite entry in the 
register, connected their names with a bracket. 
Three instances of that practice occur upon a 
single page of the register, in the same hand- 
writing, close to the page that records the 
burial, on the same day, of Mrs. (Anne Hath- 
away) Shakespeare, widow, and Anna, wife of 
Richard James. But folly needs only a slender 
hook on which to hang itself. 

John Baskerville, the famous printer, 1706- 



98 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

1775, was born in Worcester, and his remains, 
the burial-place of which was long unknown, 
have been discovered there. Incledon, the 
singer, died there. Prince Arthur (1486- 
1502), eldest son of King Henry the Seventh, 
was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where a 
beautiful chantry, built in 1504, contains his 
remains. Bishop John Gauden (1605-1662), 
who, it is believed, wrote the "Eikon Basilike," 
— long generally attributed to King Charles 
the First, — rests there. The body of the Duke 
of Hamilton was transferred to that place, from 
a temporary grave in the Commandery. In the 
centre of the sacrarium stands the tomb of 
the cruel King John, who died, October 19, 
1216, at Newark. That tomb was opened, 
July 17, 1797, in a quest for the discovery 
of the sepulchre of that sovereign, and there 
is an interesting account of the exploration, 
written by Valentine Green, in that year. 

Making a visit to the neighboring city of 
Gloucester, it was my privilege to see the 
Shakespeare relics that are, or that were, pre- 
served there, in a dwelling in Westgate Street, 



THE FAITHFUL CITY 99 

occupied by the Messrs. Fletcher, dealers in 
fire-arms. Mrs. E. Fletcher, who died in 
1890, at an advanced age, claimed to be a 
collateral descendant from Shakespeare, and 
she always strenuously maintained that those 
memorials of the poet, a Jug and a Cane, 
had been handed down, in her family, through 
succeeding generations, from Shakespeare's 
time. Tradition declares that Shakespeare 
once owned those articles, and the devotional 
care with which they have been guarded is 
a proof that the tradition has not lacked 
power. Each of them was enclosed in a case 
of wood and glass, and I found the cases 
in a locked room. The Jug, made of stone- 
ware, is of a simple form, having pannelled 
sides, with figures embossed upon them, and 
it is surmounted by a metal lid. The Cane 
is a Malacca joint, about four feet long. 
As it was enclosed I could not take it into 
my hands for close examination, but I saw 
that it is such a cane as was customarily 
carried in the days of Queen Elizabeth and 
King James the First. Miss Fletcher, who 



100 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

showed those relics, spoke of them with venera- 
tion, and she displayed a large box of papers, 
written and printed, relative to their history. 
"They are not now for sale," she said, "but 
they will be hereafter." They have been 
several times publicly exhibited, and they are 
freely shown to the wanderer who takes the 
trouble to inquire for them. An effigy of 
Shakespeare was one of the embellishments 
of the little room in which they were enshrined, 
and it was not difficult, when standing in 
their presence, in the ancient city of Gloucester, 
with haunting historic shapes on every hand, 
to credit their authenticity as objects that the 
poet had known and touched. 



VI. 
LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON. 

To a man of letters there is no name in 
the long annals of English literature more 
interesting and significant than that of Samuel 
Johnson. It has been said that no other 
man was ever subjected to such a light as 
Boswell threw upon Johnson, and that few 
other men could have endured it as well. He 
was in many ways noble, but of all men of 
letters he is especially noble as the champion 
of literature. He vindicated the profession 
of the writer. He lived by the pen, and he 
taught the great world, once for all, that it is 
honorable so to live. That lesson was needed 
in the England of his period, and from that 
period onward the literary vocation has steadily 
been held in higher esteem than it enjoyed up 

to that time. The reader will not be surprised 

101 



102 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

that one of the humblest of his followers should 
linger for a while in the ancient town that is 
glorified by association with his illustrious 
name, or should write a word of fealty and 
homage in the birthplace of Dr. Johnson. 

Lichfield is a cluster of commonplace streets 
and of red-brick and stucco buildings, lying in 
a vale northward from Birmingham, diversified 
by a couple of artificial lakes and glorified by 
one of the loveliest churches in Europe. Lich- 
field Cathedral, although an ancient structure, 
— dating back, indeed, to the early part of the 
twelfth century, — has been so badly battered, 
and so considerably "restored," that it presents 
the aspect of a building almost modern. The 
denotements of antiquity, however, are not 
entirely absent from it, and it is not less 
venerable than majestic. No one of the 
cathedrals of England presents a more beauti- 
ful front. The multitudinous statues of saints 
and kings that are upon it create an impres- 
sion of royal opulence. The carving upon the 
recesses of the great doorways on the north 
and west is of astonishing variety and loveli- 



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LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL— WEST FRONT 

Most beautiful! I gaze and gaze 
In alienee on the glorious pile. 

And the glad thoughts of other days 
Come thronging back the while. 

PRAED. 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 103 

ness. The massive doors of dark oak, fretted 
with ironwork of rare delicacy, are impressive 
and are exceptionally suitable for such an 
edifice. Seven of the large Gothic windows 
in the chancel are filled with genuine old 
glass, — not, indeed, the glass they originally 
contained, for that was broken by the Puritan 
fanatics, but a great quantity (no less than 
three hundred and forty panes, each about 
twenty-two inches square), made in Germany, 
in the early part of the sixteenth century, when 
the art of staining glass was practised in per- 
fection. This treasure was given to the 
Cathedral by a liberal friend, Sir Brooke 
Boothby, who had obtained it by purchase, 
in 1802, from the dissolved Abbey of Hercken- 
rode. No such color as that old glass presents 
can be seen in the glass that is manufactured 
now. It is imitated, indeed, but it does not 
last. The subjects portrayed in those sump- 
tuous windows are mostly scriptural, but the 
centre window on the north side of the chancel 
is devoted to portraits of noblemen, one of 
them being Errard de la Marck, who was 



104 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

enthroned Bishop of Liege in 1505, and who, 
toward the end of his stormy life, adopted the 
old Roman motto, comprehensive and final, 
which, a little garbled, appears in the glass 
beneath his heraldic arms: 

Deciplmus votis; et tempore fallimur; 
Et Mors deridet curas ; anxia vita nihil. 

The father of the elegant Joseph Addison 
was Dean of Lichfield from 1688 to 1703, and 
his remains are buried in the ground, near the 
west door of the church. The stately Latin 
epitaph was written by his son. This and 
several other epitaphs here attract the inter- 
ested attention of literary students. A tablet 
on the north wall, in the porch, commemorates 
the courage and sagacity of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, who introduced into Eng- 
land the practice of inoculation for the small- 
pox. Anna Seward, the poet, who died in 
1809, aged sixty-six, and who was one of the 
friends of Dr. Johnson, was buried and is 
commemorated here, and the fact that she 
placed a tablet here, in memory of her father, 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 105 

is celebrated in sixteen eloquent, felicitous lines 
by Sir Walter Scott. That father, a canon of 
Lichfield, died in 1790. The reader of Bos- 
well will not fail to remark the epitaph on 
Gilbert Walmesley, once registrar of the 
ecclesiastical court of Lichfield, and one of 
Dr. Johnson's friends. Of Chappel Wood- 
house it is significantly said, upon his memorial 
stone, that he was "lamented most by those 
who knew him best." Here the pilgrim sees 
two of the best works of Sir Francis Chantrey, 
— one called "The Sleeping Children," placed 
in 1817, in memory of two young daughters 
of the Rev. William Robinson; the other a 
kneeling figure of Bishop Ryder, who died in 
1836. The former was one of the earliest 
triumphs of Chantrey, — an exquisite semblance 
of heavenly innocence and purity. Chantrey 
had seen the beautiful sculpture of little Penel- 
ope Boothby, in Ashbourne church, Derby- 
shire, made by Thomas Banks, and he may 
have been inspired by that spectacle. Near by 
is placed one of the most sumptuous monu- 
ments in England, a recumbent statue, made 



106 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

by the master-hand of Watts, the painter, 
representing Bishop Lonsdale, who died in 
1867. That figure, in which the modelling is 
very beautiful and expressive, rests upon a bed 
of marble and alabaster. In Chantrey's statue 
of Bishop Ryder, which seems no effigy, but 
indeed the living man, there is marvellous per- 
fection of drapery, — the marble having the 
effect of flowing silk. Here also, in the south 
transept, is the urn of the Gastrell family, 
formerly of Stratford-upon-Avon, to whom 
was due the destruction (1759) of the house of 
New Place, in which Shakespeare died. No 
mention of the Rev. Mr. Gastrell occurs in the 
epitaph, but copious eulogium is lavished on 
his widow, both in verse and prose, and she 
must indeed have been a good woman, if the 
line is true which describes her as "A friend 
to want when each false friend withdrew." 
Her chief title to remembrance, however, like 
that of her husband, is a painful association 
with one of the most sacred of literary shrines. 
In 1776 Johnson, accompanied by Boswell, 
visited Lichfield, and Boswell records that they 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 107 

dined with Mrs. Gastrell and her sister Mrs. 
Aston. The Rev. Mr. Gastrell was then dead. 
"I was not informed till afterward," says Bos- 
well, "that Mrs. Gastrell's husband was the 
clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford- 
upon-Avon, with Gothic barbarity cut down 
Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, and as Dr. John- 
son told me, did it to vex his neighbors. His 
lady, I have reason to believe, on the same 
authority, participated in the guilt of what 
enthusiasts of our immortal bard deem almost 
a species of sacrilege." 

Upon the ledge of a casement on the east 
side of the chancel, separated by the central 
lancet of a threefold window, stand the marble 
busts of Samuel Johnson and David Garrick. 
Side by side they went through life, side by side 
their ashes repose in the great Abbey at West- 
minster, and side by side they are commemo- 
rated in Lichfield Cathedral. Both the busts 
were made by Richard Westmacott. The head 
of Johnson appears without his customary wig. 
The colossal individuality of the man plainly 
declares itself, in form and pose, in every line 



108 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

of the eloquent face, and in the dignity of sug- 
gested carriage and action. This work was 
based on a cast, taken after death. The head 
is massive yet graceful, denoting a compact 
brain and great natural refinement of intellect. 
The brow is indicative of uncommon sweetness. 
The eyes are finely shaped. The nose is 
prominent, long, and slightly aquiline, with 
wide, sensitive nostrils. The mouth is large, 
and the lips are slightly parted, as if in 
speech. Prodigious perceptive faculties are 
indicated in the forehead, a peculiarity also 
especially characteristic in the bust of Gar- 
rick. The total expression of the countenance 
is benignant, yet troubled and rueful. It is 
a thoughtful, venerable face, and yet it is the 
passionate face of a man who has passed 
through many storms of self-conflict and been 
much ravaged by spiritual pain. The face of 
Garrick, on the contrary, is eager, animated, 
triumphant, happy, showing a nature of abso- 
lute simplicity, a sanguine temperament, and 
a mind that tempests may have ruffled but 
never convulsed. Garrick kept his "storm and 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 109 

stress" for his tragic performances; there was 
no particle of it in his personal experience. 
It was good to see those old friends thus 
associated in the beautiful church that they knew 
and loved in the sweet days when their friend- 
ship had just begun and their labors and their 
honors were all before them. I placed myself 
where, during the service, I could look upon 
both the busts at once; and presently, in the 
deathlike silence, after the last response of 
evensong had died away, I could well believe 
that those comrades of fancy were kneeling 
beside me, as so often they must have knelt 
beneath this glorious roof: and for one wor- 
shipper the beams of the sinking sun, that made 
a solemn splendor through the church, illumined 
visions no mortal eyes could see. 

Beneath the bust of Johnson, upon a stone 
slab affixed to the wall, appears this inscrip- 
tion: 

THE FRIENDS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D., A NATIVE 
OF LICHFIELD, ERECTED THIS MONUMENT AS A TRIBUTE 
OF RESPECT TO THE MEMORY OF A MAN OF EXTENSIVE 
LEARNING, A DISTINGUISHED MORAL WRITER AND A SIN- 



110 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

CEEE CHRISTIAN. HE DIED THE 13TH OF DECEMBER, 
1784, AGED 75 YEARS. 

A similar stone beneath the bust of Gar- 
rick is inscribed as follows: 

EVA MARIA, RELICT OF DAVID GARRICK, ESQ., CAUSED 
THIS MONUMENT TO BE ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF 
HER BELOVED HUSBAND, WHO DIED THE 20TH OF JANU- 
ARY 1779, AGED 63 YEARS. HE HAD NOT ONLY THE 
AMIABLE QUALITIES OF PRIVATE LIFE, BUT SUCH ASTON- 
ISHING DRAMATICK TALENTS AS TOO WELL VERIFIED THE 
OBSERVATION OF HIS FRIEND : " HIS DEATH ECLIPSED 
THE GAYETY OF NATIONS AND IMPOVERISHED THE PUB- 
LICK STOCK OF HARMLESS PLEASURE." 

This "observation" is the well-known 
eulogium of Johnson, who, however much he 
may have growled about Garrick, always loved 
him and deeply mourned for him. 

The house in which Johnson was born stands 
at the corner of Market Street and Bread- 
market Street, facing the little market-place 
of Lichfield. It is an old building, three 
stories in height, having a long, peaked roof. 
The lower story is recessed, so that the 
entrance is sheltered by a pent. Its two doors, 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 111 

— for the structure now consists of two tene- 
ments, — are approached by low stone steps, 
guarded by an iron rail. There are ten 
windows, five in each row, in the front of the 
upper stories. The pent-roof is supported by 
three sturdy pillars. The house has a front 
of stucco. Here old Michael Johnson kept his 
bookshop, in the days of good Queen Anne, 
and from this door young Samuel Johnson 
went forth to his school and his play. The 
whole various, pathetic, impressive story of his 
long, laborious, sturdy, beneficent life drifts 
through your mind as you stand at that 
threshold and conjure up the pictures of the 
Past. Opposite to the house, and facing it, is 
the statue of Johnson, presented to Lichfield, 
in 1838, by James Thomas Law, then Chan- 
cellor of the diocese. On the sides of its 
massive pedestal are sculptures, showing first 
the boy, borne on his father's shoulders, listen- 
ing to the preaching of Dr. Sacheverell; then 
the youth, victorious in school, carried aloft in 
triumph by his admiring comrades; and, finally, 
the renowned scholar and author, in the 



112 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

meridian of his greatness, standing bareheaded 
in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing pen- 
ance for his undutiful refusal, when a lad, to 
relieve his weary, infirm father in the work of 
tending the bookstall at that place. Every 
one knows that touching story, and no one 
who thinks of it when standing there will gaze 
with any feeling but that of reverence, com- 
mingled with the wish to lead a true and 
simple life, upon the noble, thoughtful face 
and figure of the great moralist, who now 
seems to look down with benediction upon the 
scenes of his youth. The statue, which is 
in striking contrast with the humble birth- 
place, points the expressive moral of a splendid 
career. Johnson was not a great creative poet; 
neither a Shakespeare, a Dryden, a Byron, 
nor a Tennyson; but he was a great prose 
writer and he was one of the most massive 
and majestic characters in English litera- 
ture. A superb example of self-conquest 
and moral supremacy, a mine of extensive and 
diversified learning, an intellect remarkable for 
deep penetration and broad and generally sure 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 113 

grasp of great subjects, he exerted, as few 
men have ever exerted, the original, elemental 
force of genius; and his immortal legacy 
to his fellow-men was an abiding influence 
for good. The world is better and happier 
because of him, and because of the many 
earnest characters and honest lives that his 
example has inspired; and this cradle of great- 
ness should be preserved for every succeeding 
generation as long as time endures. 

One of the interesting features of Lichfield 
is an inscription that vividly recalls the ancient 
strife of Roundhead and Cavalier, two cen- 
turies and a half ago. This is found upon 
a stone scutcheon, set in the wall over the 
door of the house that is No. 24 Dam Street, 
and these are its words: 



March 2d, 1643, Lord Brooke, a General of the 
Parliament Forces preparing to Besiege the Close of 
Lichfield, then garrisoned For King Charles the First, 
Received his deathwound on the spot Beneath this 
Inscription, By a shot in the forehead from Mr. Dyott, 
a gentleman who had placed himself on the Battle- 
ments of the great steeple, to annoy the Besiegers. 



114 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

One of them he must have "annoyed" seriously. 
It was "a long shot, Sir Lucius," for, stand- 
ing on the place of that catastrophe and look- 
ing up to "the battlements of the great 
steeple," it seemed to have covered a distance 
of nearly four hundred feet. Other relics of 
those Roundhead wars were shown in the 
Cathedral, in an ancient room now used for 
the bishop's consistory court, — these being two 
cannon-balls, and the ragged and dusty 
fragments of a shell, that were dug out of 
the ground, near the church. Many such 
practical tokens of Puritan zeal have been dis- 
covered. 

Lichfield Cathedral Close, in the time of 
Bishop Walter de Langton, who died in 
1321, was surrounded by a wall and fosse, 
and thereafter, whenever the wars came, it was 
used as a fortification. In the Stuart times it 
was often besieged. Sir John Gell succeeded 
Lord Brooke, when the latter had been shot 
by Mr. Dyott, — who is said to have been 
"deaf and dumb," but who evidently was not 
blind. The close was surrendered on March 5, 



LICHFIELD AND DR. JOHNSON 115 

1643, and thereupon the Parliamentary victors, 
according to their ruthless and brutal custom, 
straightway ravaged the church, tearing the 
brasses from the tombs, breaking the effigies, 
and utterly despoiling beauty which it had 
taken generations of pious zeal and loving 
devotion to create. The great spire was bat- 
tered down by those vandals, and in falling 
it wrecked the chapter-house. The noble 
church, indeed, was made a ruin, and so it 
remained till 1661, when its munificent bene- 
factor, Bishop John Hacket, began its restora- 
tion, now happily almost complete. Prince 
Rupert captured Lichfield Close, for the king, 
in April, 1643, and General Lothian recovered 
it, for the Parliament, in the summer of 1646, 
after which time it was completely dismantled. 
King Charles the First came to this place 
after the fatal battle of Naseby, and sad 
enough that picturesque, vacillating, short- 
sighted, beatific aristocrat must have been, gaz- 
ing over the green fields of Lichfield, to know, 
— as surely even he must then have known, — 
that his cause was doomed, if not already lost. 



116 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

It will not take you long to traverse Lich- 
field, and you can ramble all around it through 
little green lanes between hedgerows. That 
you will do if you are wise, for the walk, 
especially at evening, is peaceful and lovely. 
The wanderer never gets far away from the 
Cathedral. Those three superb spires steadily 
dominate the scene, and each new view of 
them seems fairer than the last. All around 
the little city the fields are richly green, and 
many trees diversify the prospect. Pausing 
to rest awhile, in the mouldering graveyard 
of old St. Chad's, I saw the rooks flocking 
homeward to the great tree-tops not far away, 
and heard their many querulous, sagacious, 
humorous croakings, while over the distance, 
borne upon the mild and fragrant evening 
breeze, floated the solemn note of a warning 
bell from the Cathedral tower, as the shadows 
deepened and the night came down. Scenes 
like that sink deep into the heart, and memory 
keeps them forever. 



VII. 
BOSWORTH AND KING RICHARD. 

The character of King Richard the Third 
has been distorted and maligned by the old 
historians from whose authority the accepted 
view of it is derived. He was a gallant soldier, 
a wise statesman, a judicious legislator, a 
natural ruler of men, and a prince highly 
accomplished in music and the fine arts and 
in the graces of social life. Some of the best 
laws ever enacted in England were enacted 
during his reign. His title to the throne of 
England was absolutely clear, as against the 
Earl of Richmond, and but for the treachery 
of some among his followers he would have 
prevailed in the contest on Bos worth Field, 
and would have vindicated and maintained that 
title over all opposition. He lost the battle, 
and he was too great a man to survive the 

117 



118 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

ruin of his fortunes. He threw away his life 
that day, in the last mad charge upon Rich- 
mond, and when once the grave had closed over 
him, and his usurping cousin had seized the 
English crown, it naturally must have become 
the easy as well as the politic business of 
history to blacken his character. England was 
never ruled by a more severe monarch than 
the austere, crafty, avaricious King Henry the 
Seventh, and it is certain that no word in 
praise of his predecessor could have been pub- 
licly said in England during King Henry's 
reign: neither would it have been wholly safe 
for anybody to speak for Richard and the 
House of York, in the time of King Henry 
the Eighth, the cruel Queen Mary, or the 
illustrious Queen Elizabeth. The drift, in fact, 
was all the other way. The "Life of Richard 
the Third," by Sir Thomas More, is the foun- 
tain-head of the other narratives of his career, 
and there can be no doubt that More, who as 
a youth had lived at Canterbury, in the palace 
of Archbishop Morton, derived his views of 
Richard from that prelate, — to whose hand, 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 119 

indeed, the essential part of the "Life" has 
been attributed. Morton was Bishop of Ely 
when he deserted Richard, and King Henry 
the Seventh rewarded him by making him 
Archbishop of Canterbury. No man of the 
time was so little likely as Morton to take an 
unprejudiced view of King Richard the Third. 
It is the Morton view that has become history. 
The world still looks at Richard through the 
eyes of his victorious foe. Moreover, the 
Morton view has been stamped indelibly upon 
the imagination and the credulity of man- 
kind by the overwhelming, irresistible genius 
of Shakespeare, who wrote "King Richard III." 
in the reign of the granddaughter of King 
Henry the Seventh, and who, aside from the 
safeguard of discretion, saw dramatic possi- 
bilities in the man of dark passions and deeds 
that he could not have seen in a more virtuous 
monarch. Goodness, generally, is monotonous. 
"The low sun makes the color." It is not 
to be supposed that Richard was a model 
man, but there are good reasons for thinking 
that he was not as black as detraction has 



120 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

painted him, and, good or bad, he is one of 
the most fascinating personalities that history 
and literature have made immortal. 

It was with no common emotion that I 
stood upon the summit of Amyon Hill and 
looked downward over the plain where King 
Richard fought his last fight and went 
gloriously to his death. The battle of Bos- 
worth Field was fought on August 22, 1485. 
More than four hundred years have passed 
since then, yet, except for the incursions of a 
canal and a railway, the aspect of that plain 
is but little changed from what it was when 
Richard surveyed it, on that gray, sombre 
morning when he beheld the forces of the 
Earl of Richmond advancing past the marsh 
and knew that the supreme crisis of his life had 
come. The Earl was pressing forward from 
Tamworth and Atherstone, which are in the 
northern part of Warwickshire, — the latter 
being close upon the Leicestershire border. 
His course was a little to the southeast, and 
Richard's forces, facing northwesterly^ con- 
fronted their enemies from the summit of a 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 121 

long and gently sloping hill that extends for 
several miles, about east and west, from Bos- 
worth on the right, to the vicinity of Dadling- 
ton on the left. The king's position had been 
chosen with an excellent judgment that has 
more than once, in modern times, elicited the 
admiration of accomplished soldiers. His 
right wing, commanded by Lord Stanley, 
rested on Bosworth. His left was protected 
by a marsh. Sir William Stanley com- 
manded the left and had his headquarters 
in Dadlington. Richard rode in the centre. 
Far to the right he saw the clustered houses 
and the spire of Bosworth, and far to the 
left his glance rested on the little church of 
Dadlington. Below and in front of him all 
was open field, and all across that field waved 
the banners and sounded the trumpets of 
rebellion and defiance. It is easy to imagine 
the glowing emotions, — the implacable resent- 
ment, the passionate fury, and the deadly pur- 
pose of slaughter and vengeance, — with which 
the imperious and terrible monarch gazed on 
his approaching foes. They show, in a meadow, 



122 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

a little way over the crest of the hill, where 
it is marked and partly covered now by a 
pyramidal structure of gray stones, suitably 
inscribed with a few commemorative lines, in 
Latin, a spring of water at which Richard 
paused to quench his thirst, before he made 
that last desperate charge on Redmore Heath, 
when at length he knew himself betrayed and 
abandoned, and felt that his only hope lay in 
killing the Earl of Richmond with his own 
hand. The fight at Bosworth was brief, — 
lasting less than two hours. Both the Stanleys 
deserted the king's standard, early in the fray. 
It was easy for them, posted as they were, 
to wheel their forces into the rear of the 
rebel army, at the right and at the left. 
Nothing then remained for Richard but to 
rush down upon the centre, where he saw the 
banner of Richmond, — borne, at that moment, 
by Sir William Brandon, — and to crush the 
treason at its head. It must have been a 
charge of tremendous impetuosity. It bore the 
fiery king a long way forward on the level 
plain. He struck down Brandon, cleaving his 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 123 

helmet at a single blow. He struck down 
Sir John Cheyney, a man of almost gigantic 
stature. He plainly saw the Earl of Richmond, 
and came almost near enough to encounter 
him, when many swords were buried in his 
body, and he fell, beneath heaps of the slain. 
The place of his death is now the junction 
of three country roads, one leading north- 
west to Shenton, one southwest to Dadlington, 
and one bearing away easterly toward Bos- 
worth. A little brook, called Sandy Ford, 
flows underneath the road, and there is a con- 
siderable coppice in the field at the junction. 
Upon a prosaic sign-board appear the names of 
Dadlington and Hinckley. Not more than 
five hundred feet distant, to the eastward, rises 
the embankment of a branch of the Midland 
Railway, from Nuneaton to Leicester, while at 
about the same distance to the westward rises 
the similar embankment of a canal. No monu- 
ment has been erected to mark the spot where 
Richard was slain. They took up his mangled 
body, threw it across a horse, and carried it 
into the town of Leicester, and there it was 



124 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

buried, in the church of the Gray Friars, — 
also the sepulchre of Cardinal Wolsey, — now 
a ruin. There it remained for almost half a 
century. One account relates that several years 
after the burial a monument was erected over 
Richard's grave, surmounted by an image of 
him, in alabaster, and that those memorials 
were destroyed at the time of the demolition 
of the religious houses, in the reign of King 
Henry the Eighth. The only commemorative 
mark upon the battlefield is the pyramid at the 
well, and that stands at a long distance from the 
place of the king's fall. I tried to picture the 
scene of his final charge and his frightful death, 
as I stood there upon the hill-side. Many little 
slate-colored clouds were drifting across a pale 
blue sky. A cool summer breeze was sighing 
in the branches of the neighboring trees. The 
bright green sod was alive with the sparkling 
yellow of the colt's-foot and the soft red of 
the clover. Birds were whistling from the 
coppice near by, and overhead the air was 
flecked with innumerable black pinions of 
fugitive rooks and starlings. It did not seem 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 125 

possible that a sound of war or a deed of 
violence could ever have intruded to break the 
Sabbath stillness of that scene of peace. 

The water of King Richard's Well is a 
shallow pool, choked now with moss and weeds. 
The inscription, which was written by Dr. 
Samuel Parr, of Hatton, reads as follows: 

AQVA. EX. HOC. PVTEO. HAVSTA. 

SITIM. SEDAVIT. 

RICHAEDVS. TERTIVS. HEX. ANGLIAE 

CVM HENRICO. COMITE DE RICHMONDIA 

ACERRIME. ATQVE. INGENTISSIME. PRAELIANS 

ET. VITA. PARITER. AC. SCEPTRO 

ANTE NOCTEM. CARITVRUS 

H KA!L. SEP. A.D. M.C.C.C.C.LXXXV. 

There are five churches in the immediate 
neighborhood of Bosworth Field, all of which 
were, in one way or another, associated with 
that memorable battle. Ratcliffe Culey church 
has a low square tower and a short stone 
spire, and there is herbage growing upon its 
tower and its roof. It is a building of the 
fourteenth century, — one mark of this period 
being its perpendicular stone font, — an octagon 



126 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

in shape, and much frayed by time. In three 
arches of its chancel, on the south side, the 
sculpture shows tri-foliated forms, of excep- 
tional beauty. In the east window there are 
fragments of old glass, rich in color and quaint 
and singular. The churchyard is full of odd 
gravestones, various in shape and irregular in 
position. An ugly slate-stone is much used in 
Leicestershire for monuments to the dead. 
Most of those stones record modern burials, 
the older graves being unmarked. The grass 
grows thick and dense, all over the church- 
yard. Upon the church walls are several fine 
specimens of those mysterious ray and circle 
marks which have long been a puzzle to the 
archaeological explorer. Such marks are usually 
found in the last bay but one, on the south 
side of the nave, toward the west end of the 
church. On Ratcliffe Culey church they con- 
sist of central points with radial lines, like a 
star, but these are not enclosed, as often 
happens, with circle lines. Various theories 
have been advanced, by antiquarians, to account 
for these designs. Probably those marks were 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 127 

cut upon the churches, by the pious monks of 
old, as emblems of eternity. 

Shenton Hall, 1629, long and still the seat 
of the Woollastons, stood directly in the path 
of the combatants at Bosworth Field, and the 
fury of the battle must have raged all around 
it. The Hall has been recased, and, except 
for its old gatehouse and semi-octagon bays, 
which are of the Tudor style, it presents a 
modern aspect. Its windows open toward 
Redmore Heath and Ambien Hill, the scene 
of the conflict between the Red Rose and 
the White. The church has been entirely 
rebuilt, — a handsome edifice, of crucial form, 
containing costly pews, of old oak, together 
with interesting brasses and busts, taken from 
the old church which it has replaced. The 
brasses commemorate Richard Coate and 
Joyce his wife, and Richard Everard and his 
wife, and are dated 1556, 1597, and 1616. 
The busts are of white marble, dated 1666, 
and are commemorative of William Woollaston 
and his wife, once lord and lady of the manor 
of Shenton. It was the rule, in building 



128 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

churches, that one end should face to the east 
and the other to the west, but you frequently 
find an old church that is set at a slightly 
different angle, — that, namely, at which the 
sun arose on the birthday of the saint to whom 
the church was dedicated. The style of large 
east and west windows, with trefoil or other 
ornamentation in the heads of the arches, came 
into vogue about the time of King Edward 
the First. 

Traces of the earthworks that were con- 
structed by King Richard's command, at Dad- 
lington, are still visible. Dadlington church 
has almost crumbled to pieces, but it will be 
restored. It is a diminutive structure, with a 
wooden tower, stuccoed walls, and a tiled roof, 
and it stands in a graveyard full of scattered 
mounds and slate-stone monuments. It was 
built in Norman times, and although still used it 
has long been little better than a ruin. One of 
the bells in its tower is marked "Thomas Arnold 
fecit, 1763." The church contains two pointed 
arches, and across its nave are five massive 
oak beams, almost black with age. The 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 129 

plaster ceiling has fallen, in several places, 
so that patches of laths are visible in the roof. 
The pews are square, box-like structures, made 
of oak and very old. The altar is a plain oak 
table, supported on carved legs, covered with 
a cloth. On the west wall appears a tablet, 
inscribed, "Thomas Eames, church-warden, 
1773." Many human skeletons, arranged in 
regular tiers, were found in Dadlington 
churchyard, when a revered clergyman, the 
Rev. Mr. Bourne, was buried, in 1881, and 
it is believed that those are remains of men 
who fell at Bos worth Field. The only inn 
at this lonely place bears the quaint name of 
The Dog and Hedgehog. 

The following queer epitaph appears upon 
a gravestone in Dadlington churchyard. It is 
Thomas Bolland, 1765, who thus expresses his 
mind, in mortuary reminiscence: 

I lov'd my Honour'd Parents dear, 
I lov'd my Wife's and Children dear, 
And hope in Heaven to meet them there. 
I lov'd my Brothers & Sisters too, 
And hope I shall them in Heaven view. 



130 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

I lov'd my Vncle's, Aunt's, & Cousin's too 
And I pray God to give my children grace the same 
to do. 

Stoke-Golding church was built in the four- 
teenth century. It stands now, a gray and 
melancholy relic of other days, strange and 
forlorn, yet august and stately, in a little brick 
village, the streets of which are paved, like 
those of a city, with blocks of stone. It is 
regarded as one of the best specimens extant 
of the decorative style of early English eccle- 
siastical architecture. It has a fine tower and 
spire, and it consists of nave, chantry, and 
south aisle. There is a perforated parapet on 
one side, but not on the other. The walls of 
the nave and the chancel are continuous. The 
pinnacles, though decayed, show that they must 
have been beautifully carved. One of the 
decorative pieces upon one of them is a rabbit, 
with his ears laid back. Lichen and grass are 
growing on the tower and on the walls. The 
roof is of oak, the mouldings of the arches are 
exceptionally graceful, and the capitals of the 
five main columns present, in marked diversity, 



BOSWORTH AND RICHARD 131 

carvings of faces, flowers, and leaves. The 
tomb of the founder is on the north side, and 
the stone pavement is everywhere lettered with 
inscriptions of burial. There is a fine mural 
brass, bearing the name of Brokesley, 1633, 
and a superb "stocke chest," 1636, and there is 
a sculptured font, of exquisite symmetry. 
Some of the carving upon the oak roof is 
more grotesque than decorative, — but this is 
true of most other carving to be found in 
ancient churches; such, for example, as you can 
see under the miserere seats in the chancel of 
Trinity church at Stratford-upon-Avon. There 
was formerly some beautiful old stained glass in 
the east window of Stoke-Golding church, but 
it has disappeared. A picturesque stone slab, 
set upon the church wall outside, arrests atten- 
tion by its pleasing shape, its venerable aspect, 
and its decayed lettering; the date is 1684. 
Many persons slain at Bosworth Field were 
buried in Stoke-Golding churchyard, and over 
their nameless graves the long grass is waving, 
in indolent luxuriance and golden light. So 
Nature hides waste and forgets pain. Near 



132 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

to this village is Crown Hill, where the Crown 
of England was taken from a hawthorn bush, 
whereon it had been cast, in the frenzied con- 
fusion of defeat, after the battle of Bos worth 
was over and the star of King Richard had 
gone down in death. Crown Hill is a green 
meadow now, without distinguishing feature, 
except that two large trees, each having a 
double trunk, are growing in the middle of 
it. Not distant from this historic spot stands 
Higham-on-the-Hill, where there is a fine 
church, remarkable for its Norman tower. 
From this village the view is magnificent, — 
embracing all that section of Leicestershire 
which is thus haunted with memories of King 
Richard and of the carnage that marked the 
final conflict of the White and Red roses. 



VIII. 

OLD YORK. 

My first prospect of old York was a 
prospect through drizzle and mist, yet even 
so it was impressive. York is one of the 
quaintest cities in the kingdom. Many of the 
streets are narrow and crooked. Most of the 
buildings are of low stature, built of brick 
and roofed with red tiles. Here and there 
you find a house of Queen Elizabeth's time, 
picturesque with overhanging timber-crossed 
fronts and peaked gables. One such house, 
in Stonegate, is conspicuously marked with its 
date, 1574. Another, in College Street, enclos- 
ing a quadrangular court and lovely with old 
timber and carved gateway, was built by the 
Neville family, in 1460. There is a wide area 
in the centre of the town called Parliament 
Street, where the market is opened, by torch- 

133 



134 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

light, on certain evenings of every week. It 
was market-time when I entered the city, and, 
wandering through the motley and merry 
crowd that filled the square, about nine o'clock 
at night, I bought, at a flower-stall, the white 
rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, 
— twining them as an emblem of the settled 
peace that now and here broods so sweetly 
over the venerable relics of a wild and stormy 
Past. 

Four sections of the old Wall of York are 
still extant, and the observer is amused to per- 
ceive the ingenuity with which those gray, 
mouldering remnants of the feudal age are 
blended into the structures of the democratic 
present. From Bootham to Monk Gate, — 
so named at the Restoration, in honor of Gen- 
eral Monk, — a distance of about half a mile, 
the wall is absorbed by the adjacent buildings; 
but you can walk upon it from Monk Gate 
to Jewbury, about a quarter of a mile, and 
afterward, crossing the Foss, you can find it 
again on the southeast of the city, and walk 
upon it from Red Tower to old Fishergate, 




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OLD YORK 135 

descending near York Castle. There are 
houses within the walls and without. The 
walk is about eight feet wide, protected on 
one hand by a fretted battlement and on the 
other by an occasional bit of iron fence. The 
base of the Wall, for a considerable part of 
its extent, is fringed with market gardens or 
with grassy banks. In one of its towers there 
is a gate-house, occupied as a dwelling, and 
a comfortable dwelling no doubt it is. In 
another, of which nothing now remains but the 
walls, four large trees are rooted, and, as 
they are tall enough to wave their leafy tops 
above the battlement, they must have been 
growing there for many years. At one point 
a railroad track has been laid, through an 
arch in the ancient wall, and as you look down 
from the battlements your gaze rests upon long 
lines of rail and a spacious station, together 
with its adjacent hotel, objects which consort 
but strangely with what your fancy knows of 
York, — a city of donjons and barbicans, the 
moat, the draw-bridge, the portcullis, the 
citadel, the man-at-arms, and the knight in 



136 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

armor, with the banners of William the Nor- 
man flowing over all. 

The river Ouse divides the city of York, 
which lies mostly upon its east bank, and in 
order to reach the longest and most attractive 
portion of the Wall that is now accessible to 
the pedestrian you must cross the Ouse, either 
at Skeldergate or Lendal, paying a halfpenny 
toll, both when you go and when you return. 
The walk here is three-quarters of a mile 
long, and from an angle of this wall, just 
above the railway arch, can be obtained the 
best view of the mighty Cathedral, — one of 
the most sublime works that have been created 
by the inspired brain and loving labor of man. 
While I walked there, at night, and mused 
upon the story of the Wars of the Roses, and 
strove to conjure up the pageants and the 
horrors that must have been presented, all 
about this region, in that remote, turbulent 
past, the glorious bells of the Minster were 
chiming from its towers, while the inspirit- 
ing breeze, sweet with the fragrance of wet 
flowers and foliage, seemed to flood the ancient, 



OLD YORK 137 

venerable city with the golden music of a 
celestial benediction. 

The pilgrim to York stands in the centre of 
the largest shire in England, and is surrounded 
by castles and monasteries, now mostly in 
ruins, but teeming with those associations of 
history and literature that are the glory of 
this delightful land. From the summit of the 
great central tower of the Cathedral, which 
is reached by two hundred and thirty-seven 
steps, I gazed, one morning, over the vale 
of York and beheld one of the loveliest spec- 
tacles that ever blessed the eyes of man. The 
wind was fierce, the sun brilliant, and the van- 
quished storm-clouds were streaming away 
before the northern blast. Far beneath lay the 
red-roofed city, its devious lanes and its many 
gray churches, — crumbling relics of ancient 
ecclesiastical power, — distinctly visible. Through 
the plain and far away toward the south and 
east ran the silver thread of the Ouse, while 
all around, as far as the eye could see, 
stretched forth a smiling landscape of green 
meadow and cultivated field; here a patch of 



138 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

woodland, and there a silver gleam of wave; 
here a manor-house nestled amid stately trees, 
and there an ivy-covered fragment of ruined 
masonry; and everywhere the green lines of 
the flowering hedge. The prospect is even 
finer here than it is from the splendid sum- 
mit of Strasburg Cathedral; and indeed, when 
all is said that can be said about sympathetic 
natural scenery and architectural sublimities, 
it seems strange that any lover of the beautiful 
should deem it necessary to quit the affluent 
variety of the British Islands, in his quest of it. 
Earth cannot show you anything more softly 
fair than the lakes and mountains of Cumber- 
land and Westmoreland: no city can excel Edin- 
burgh in stately solidity of character, or tranquil 
grandeur, or magnificence of position: the 
most exquisitely beautiful of small churches is 
Roslin Chapel: and though you search the 
wide world through you will never find such 
cathedrals, — so fraught with majesty, sublimity, 
the loveliness of human art, and the ecstatic 
sense of a divine element in human destiny, — 
as those of York, Canterbury, Gloucester, and 



OLD YORK 139 

Lincoln. While thus I lingered, in wondering 
meditation, upon the crag-like summit of York 
Minster, the muffled thunder of its vast, 
sonorous organ rose, rolling and throbbing, 
from the mysterious depth below, and shook 
the great tower as with a mighty blast of jubi- 
lation and worship. At such moments, if 
ever, when the tones of human adoration are 
floating up to heaven, a man is lifted out 
of himself and made to forget his puny 
mortal existence and all the petty nothings 
that weary his spirit, darken his vision, and 
weigh him down to the level of a sordid, 
trivial world. Well did they know this, — 
those old monks who built the abbeys of 
Britain, laying their foundations not alone 
deeply in the earth but deeply in the human 
soul! 

All the ground that you survey from the 
top of York Minster is classic ground, — at 
least to those persons in whom imagination is 
kindled by associations with the stately, storied 
Past. In the city that lies at your feet once 
stood the potent Constantine, to be proclaimed 



140 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Emperor, A.D. 306, and to be vested with the 
imperial purple of Rome. In the original 
York Minster (the present is the fourth 
church that has been erected upon this site), 
was buried that valiant soldier "old Siward," 
whom "gracious England" lent to the Scottish 
cause, under Malcolm and Macduff, when time 
at length was ripe for the ruin of Glamis and 
Cawdor. Close by is the field of Stamford, 
where Harold defeated the Norwegians, with 
terrible slaughter, only nine days before he 
was himself defeated, and slain, at Hastings. 
Southward, following the line of the Ouse, 
you look down upon the ruins of Clifford's 
Tower, built by King William the Conqueror, 
in 1068, and destroyed by the explosion of its 
powder magazine in 1684. Not far away is 
the battlefield of Towton. King Henry the 
Sixth and Queen Margaret were waiting in 
York for news of the event of that fatal 
battle, — which, in its effect, made them exiles, 
and bore to supremacy the rightful standard 
of the White Rose. In this church King 
Edward the Fourth was crowned, 1464, and 



OLD YORK 141 

King Richard the Third was proclaimed king 
and had his second coronation. Southward 
you can see the open space called the 
Pavement, connecting with Parliament Street, 
and the red brick church of St. Crux. In the 
Pavement the Earl of Northumberland was 
beheaded, for treason against Queen Elizabeth, 
in 1572, and in St. Crux, one of Wren's 
chuBches, his remains lie buried, beneath a dark 
blue slab, which is shown to visitors. A few 
miles away, but easily within reach of your 
vision, is the field of Marston Moor, where 
the impetuous Prince Rupert imperilled and 
well-nigh lost the cause of King Charles the 
First, in 1644; and as you look toward that 
fatal spot you almost hear, in the cham- 
ber of your fancy, the pagans of thanksgiving, 
for the victory, that were uttered in the church 
beneath. Cromwell, then a subordinate officer 
in the Parliamentary army, was one of the 
worshippers. Of the fifteen kings, from 
William of Normandy to Henry of Windsor, 
whose sculptured effigies appear upon the 
chancel screen in York Minster, there is 



142 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

scarcely one who has not worshipped in this 
Cathedral. 

No description can convey an adequate im- 
pression of the grandeur of the Minster. Can- 
terbury is the lovelier cathedral of the two, 
though not the grander, and Canterbury pos- 
sesses the inestimable advantage of a spacious 
Close. It must be said also, for the city of 
Canterbury, that the presence and influence 
of a great church are more distinctly and 
delightfully felt in that place than they are 
in York. There is a more spiritual tone at 
Canterbury, a tone of superior delicacy and 
refinement, a certain aristocratic coldness and 
repose. In York you perceive the coarse spirit 
of a democratic era. The Walls, which ought 
to be cherished with scrupulous care, are found, 
in many places, to be ill-used. At intervals 
along the walks upon the banks of the Ouse 
you behold placards requesting the co-operation 
of the public in protecting from harm the swans 
that navigate and adorn the river. Even in 
the Cathedral itself there is displayed a printed 
notice that the Dean and Chapter are sur- 




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OLD YORK 143 

prised at disturbances which occur in the nave 
while divine service is proceeding in the choir. 
These facts imply a rough element in the 
population, and in such a place as York such 
an element is exceptionally offensive and 
deplorable. 

It was said by the wise Lord Beaconsfield 
that true progress in the nineteenth century 
is found to consist chiefly in a return to ancient 
ideas. There may be places to which the char- 
acteristic spirit of the present day contributes 
an element of beauty, but, if so, I have not 
seen them. Wherever there is beauty there is 
the living force of tradition to account for 
it. The most that a conservative force in 
society can accomplish, for the preservation of 
an instinct in favor of whatever is beautiful 
and impressive, is to protect what remains 
from the Past. Modern Edinburgh, for 
example, has contributed no building that is 
comparable with its glorious old Castle, or 
with Roslin, or with what we know to have 
been Melrose or Dryburgh; but its Castle and 
its chapels are protected and preserved. York, 



1U GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

in the present day, erects a commodious rail- 
way-station and a sumptuous hotel, and spans 
its ample river with two splendid bridges; but 
its modern architecture is puerile beside that 
of its ancient Minster, and so its best work, 
after all, is the preservation of its Cathedral. 
The observer finds it difficult to understand 
how anybody, however lowly born, or poorly 
endowed, or meanly nurtured, can live within 
the presence of that heavenly building, and 
not be purified and exalted by the contempla- 
tion of so much majesty, and by its constantly 
•irradiative force of religious sentiment and 
power. But the spirit which in the past 
created objects of beauty and adorned common 
life with visible manifestations of the celestial 
aspiration in human nature had constantly to 
struggle against insensibility or violence, and 
even so the few who have inherited that spirit 
in the present day are compelled steadily to 
combat the hard materialism and gross animal 
proclivities of the new age. 

What a comfort their souls must find in 
such an edifice as that of York! What a 



OLD YORK 145 

solace and what an inspiration! There it 
stands, symbolizing, as no other object on 
earth can ever do, except one of its own great 
kindred, the promise of immortal life to man, 
and man's pathetic faith in that promise. 
Dark and lonely it comes back upon my vision, 
but during all hours of its daily and nightly 
life sentient, eloquent, vital, participating in all 
the thought, conduct, and experience of those 
who dwell around it. A solemn peal of its 
bells that I heard one night was for Canon 
Baillie, one of the oldest and most beloved and 
venerated of its clergy. At morning, sitting 
in its choir, I listened to a thoughtful eulogy, 
simply and sweetly spoken by the aged Dean, 
and once more learned the essential lesson that 
an old age of grace, patience, and benignity 
means a pure heart, an unselfish spirit, and a 
good life passed in the service of others. At 
afternoon I had a place among the worshippers 
that thronged the nave to hear the special 
anthem chanted for the deceased Canon, and, 
as the organ pealed forth its sonorous music 
and the rich voices of the choristers swelled 



146 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

and surged in golden waves of melody upon 
the groined arches and vaulted roof, my soul 
seemed borne away to a peace and rest that 
are not of this world. To-night the rising 
moon, as she gleams through drifting clouds, 
will pour her silver rays upon that great east 
window, and the saintly stories told there in 
exquisite hues and forms will glow with 
heavenly lustre on the dark vista of chancel 
and nave, and when morning comes the first 
beams of the rising sun will stream through 
the great casement and illumine the figures of 
saints and archbishops, and gild the tattered 
battle-flags in the chancel aisle, and touch with 
blessing the marble effigies of the dead; and 
they who walk there, refreshed and comforted, 
will feel that the vast Cathedral is indeed the 
gateway to heaven. 

York is the loftiest of all the English 
cathedrals, and the third in length, — both St. 
Albans and Winchester being longer. The 
present structure is six hundred years old, 
and more than two hundred years were occu- 
pied in the building of it. They show you, 



OLD YORK 147 

in the crypt, some fine remains of the Norman 
church that preceded it, on the same site, 
together with traces of the still older Saxon 
church that preceded the Norman. The first 
one was of wood and was totally destroyed. 
The Saxon remains are a fragment of stone 
staircase and a piece of wall built in the 
ancient herring-bone fashion. The Norman 
remains are four clustered columns, embellished 
in the zigzag style. There is not much of 
commemorative statuary at York, and what 
there is of it was placed chiefly in the chancel. 
Archbishop Richard Scrope, who figures in 
Shakespeare's historical play of "King Henry 
IV.," and who was beheaded, for treason, in 
1405, was buried in the lady chapel. Laurence 
Sterne's grandfather, who was chaplain to Laud, 
is represented there, in his ecclesiastical dress, 
reclining upon a couch and supporting his 
mitred head upon his hand. Many historic 
names occur in the inscriptions, — Wentworth, 
Finch, Fenwick, Carlisle, and Heneage, — and in 
the north aisle of the chancel is the tomb of 
William of Hatfield, second son of King 



148 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Edward the Third, who died in 1343-44, in 
the eighth year of his age. An alabaster 
statue of the royal boy reclines upon his tomb. 
In the Cathedral library, which contains eight 
thousand volumes and is kept at the Deanery, 
is the Princess Elizabeth's prayer-book, con- 
taining her autograph. In one of the chapels 
is the original throne-chair of King Edward 
the Third. 

In St. Leonard's Place still stands the York 
Theatre, erected by Tate Wilkinson, in 1765. 
In York Castle Eugene Aram was imprisoned 
and suffered death. The poet and bishop 
Beilby Porteus, the sculptor Flaxman, the 
grammarian Lindley Murray, and the fanatic 
Guy Fawkes were natives of York, and have 
often walked its streets. Standing on Skelder- 
gate bridge, few readers of English fiction 
could fail to recall that exquisite description 
of the place, in the novel of "No Name." In 
his artistic use of weather, atmosphere, and 
color Wilkie Collins is always remarkable 
equally for his fidelity to nature, and for the 
felicity and excellence of his language. His 



OLD YORK 149 

portrayal of York seems more than ever a 
gem of literary art, when you have seen the 
veritable spot of poor Magdalen's meeting 
with Captain Wragge. The name of Wragge 
is on one of the signboards in the city. The 
river, on which I did not omit to sail, was 
picturesque, with many quaint barges, bearing 
masts and sails, and embellished with touches 
of green, crimson, and blue. There is no end 
to the associations and suggestions of the storied 
city, and there can be no end to the pleasure 
with which it is remembered. 



IX. 

STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

In all England there is not a cleaner, 
more decorous, or more restful town than 
Stratford-upon-Avon, and even to look upon 
it is to receive a suggestion of peace and 
comfort. The red brick dwellings shine among 
the trees, the flower-spangled meadows stretch 
away, in every direction, and the green hills, 
sprinkled with copse and villa, glimmer through 
mist, all round the lovely Vale of the Red 
Horse, — Welcombe in the north, with its con- 
spicuous monuments ; Meon in the south, rugged 
and bold; Red Hill in the west, and far away 
eastward, beyond a wide, smiling area of farms 
and villages, the crests of Edgehill, at Radley 
and Rising Sun, where once the armies of 
King Charles the First confronted their Round- 
head foe. The face of England can wear 

150 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 151 

many expressions, but when propitious it is a 
face which to see is to love, and nowhere is 
it more propitious than in stately Warwick- 
shire and around the home of Shakespeare. 

After repeated visits to Shakespeare's Town 
the traveller begins to observe more closely than 
perhaps at first he did its everyday life and its 
environment. I have rambled through fragrant 
fields to Clifford church, and strolled through 
green lanes to romantic Preston, and climbed 
Borden Hill, and stood by the May-pole on 
Welford Common, and journeyed along the 
battle-haunted crest of Edgehill, and rested at 
venerable Compton-Wynyates, and climbed the 
hills of Welcombe to peer into the darkening 
valleys of the Avon and hear the cuckoo-note 
echoed and re-echoed from rhododendron groves 
and from the great, mysterious elms that 
embower the countryside for miles and miles 
around. This is the everyday life of Strat- 
ford, — fertile farms, garnished meadows, ave- 
nues of white and coral hawthorn, masses of 
milky snow-ball, honeysuckle, and syringa load- 
ing the soft air with fragrance, chestnuts 



152 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

dropping blooms of pink and white, and labur- 
nums swinging their golden censers in the 
breeze. 

The building that forms the southeast corner 
of High Street and Bridge Street in Stratford 
was once occupied by Thomas Quiney, wine- 
dealer, who married the poet's youngest daugh- 
ter, Judith, and an inscription appears upon 
it, stating that Judith lived in it for thirty- 
six years. Richard Savage, that competent, 
patient, diligent student of the church 
registers and other documentary treasures of 
Warwickshire, furnished proof of this fact, 
from investigation of the town records, that 
being only one of many services that he has 
rendered to the old home of Shakespeare. 
Standing in the cellar of this house I saw that 
its walls are four feet thick. Also I saw many 
pieces of old oak, which, I was informed, had 
been taken from the bell-tower of the Shake- 
speare Church, in 1887, when a new frame was 
installed to sustain a chime of heavy bells, and 
which would, eventually, be converted into vari- 
ous carvings, to tempt the taste of enthusiasts of 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 153 

Shakespeare. In the poet's time the bell-tower 
was surmounted, not as now by a graceful stone 
spire, but by a spire of timber, covered with 
lead. That was removed, and was replaced by 
the stone spire, in 1746. The oak frame to sup- 
port the bells, however, had been in the tower 
more than three hundred years. 

A spiral stair of forty-five steps gives access, 
for the sedulous explorer, to the ringing- 
loft of that tower, and a ladder of nineteen 
rounds will then conduct him to the bell- 
chamber above. He can climb further if he 
likes to do so, and ascend into the interior 
of the stone spire. From the ringing-loft a 
small portal allows egress to the chancel roof, 
from which the prospect, in all directions, 
is beautiful. Looking westward over the roof 
of the nave, the observer will view a con- 
siderable part of the old town, — the slate roofs 
of its thick-clustered, cosey dwellings wet 
with recent rain or shining in fitful sunlight, 
— and beyond it the bold crest and green 
slopes of Borden Hill, where "the wild 
thyme" grows in sweet luxuriance, and where, 



154 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

since it is close to Shottery, the poet, as he 
strolled with his sweetheart, in days when love 
was young, observed and enjoyed the fragrant 
"bank" mentioned in the "Midsummer Night's 
Dream." Southward stands the crag-like hill 
of Meon, once a stronghold of the Danes, and 
far away the lonely Broadway Tower looms 
faintly on the ridge of its highland. Further 
still, dimly visible, is the wavering outline 
of the Malvern hills. In the north, some- 
times clear and bright, sometimes weltering 
beneath sombre rain-clouds of retreating storm, 
are the green heights of Welcombe, where 
once the Saxons had a fortified camp, while 
near at hand are the turrets of the Shake- 
speare Memorial, opulent Avonbank with its 
wealth of various trees and its flower-spangled 
terraces, and the old churchyard of Stratford, 
in which the roses bloom freely over man's 
decay, and in which the gray, lichen-covered 
stones are cold and forlorn against the brill- 
iant green of the sun-smitten sod. A wide 
stretch of dark green meadow, intersected with 
long, dense hedgerows of hawthorn and honey- 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 155 

suckle, fills the near prospect, in the east, 
while gently sloping hills extend into the dis- 
tance beyond, some wooded and some bare, 
and all faintly enwreathed with mist. At the 
base of the tower flows the Avon, its dark 
waters wrinkled by the breeze. Rooks are 
cawing and swifts and swallows are twitter- 
ing around the church and its spire. Leafy 
boughs of the great elms that engirdle the 
church toss and rustle in the strong wind. 
Sudden shafts of sunlight illumine the lovely 
pageant, far and near, and soon the glory of 
the west fades into that tender gloaming which 
is the crowning charm of the English summer 
day. 

Two sculptured groups, emblematic of 
Comedy and Tragedy, adorn the front of the 
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, purchased by 
the profits of a benefit performance, given in 
that building, August 29, 1885, by Miss Mary 
Anderson, who then, for the first time, imper- 
sonated Shakespeare's Rosalind. That actress, 
after her first visit to Stratford, made in 1883, 
manifested a deep interest in the town, and 



156 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

because of her services to the Shakespeare 
Memorial she was ultimately elected one of 
its life-governors. The gains of her presentment 
of "As You Like It" paid for completion of 
the decorations of the building. The emblem 
of History had already been put in place, — the 
scene, from "King John," in which Prince 
Arthur melts the cruel purpose of Hubert to 
burn out his eyes. Tragedy is represented by 
Hamlet and the Gravedigger, in their colloquy 
over Yorick's skull. In the emblem of Comedy 
the figure of Rosalind, in boy's dress, is that 
of Miss Anderson, a figure expressive of 
ingenuous demeanor and artless grace. The 
Library of The Memorial, comprising about 
ten thousand volumes, continues to grow, 
but the American department of it needs 
accessions. Every American edition of Shake- 
speare ought to be there, and every book, of 
American origin, on a Shakespearean subject. 
Of English editions of the complete works of 
Shakespeare the collection contains more than 
two hundred. A Russian translation of Shake- 
speare, in nine volumes, appears in it, together 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 157 

with three complete editions in Dutch. An 
elaborate catalogue of the collection, made by 
Mr. Frederick Hawley, records them, in an 
imperishable form. Mr. Hawley, once Libra- 
rian of the Memorial, died at Stratford, March 
13, 1889, aged sixty-two, and was buried at 
Kensal Green, in London, his wish being 
that his ashes should rest in that place. Mr. 
Hawley had been an actor, under the name 
of Haywell, and he was the author of several 
blank verse tragedies. Mr. A. H. Wall, a 
learned antiquary, succeeded him as librarian, 
and was in turn succeeded, June, 1895, by 
Mr. William Salt Brassington, who has ever 
since filled that office, with much ability. To 
Mr. Wall, now deceased, the readers of "The 
Stratford-upon-Avon Herald" are indebted for 
instructive articles, notably those giving an 
account of the original Shakespeare quartos 
acquired for the Memorial library at the sale 
of the literary property of J. O. Halliwell- 
Phillipps. Those quartos are "The Merchant 
of Venice," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," 
and a first edition of "Pericles." A copy of 



158 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

"Roger of Faversham" was also bought, 
together with two of the plays of Aphra 
Behn. Charles Edward Flower purchased, at 
that sale, a copy of the First Folio of Shake- 
speare, and the four Shakespeare Folios, 1623, 
1632, 1663-4, 1685, stood side by side in his 
private library, until his death, when they were 
inherited by the Memorial Library. 

In repairing the custodian's house at New 
Place the crossed timbers in the one remaining 
fragment of the north wall of the original 
structure were found, beneath plaster. Those 
have been left uncovered, and their dark lines 
add to the picturesque aspect of the building. 
The appearance of the house, prior to 1742, is 
known but vaguely, if at all. The street, 
Chapel Lane, that separates New Place from 
the Guild Chapel was formerly narrower than 
it is now, and the house stood in a grassy 
enclosure, encompassed by a wall, the entrance 
to the garden being at some distance east- 
ward, in the lane, toward the river. The 
chief rooms in New Place were lined with 
square, sunken oak panels, which covered the 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 159 

walls from floor to roof, and, probably, also 
covered the ceilings. Some of those panels, 
obtained when the Rev. Francis Gastrell caused 
that house to be demolished, can, or once could, 
be seen, in a parlor of the Falcon hotel, at 
the corner of Scholar's Lane and Chapel Street. 
A large collection of old writings was found 
in a room of the Grammar School, adjacent 
to the Guild Chapel, in 1887. It contains 
five thousand separate papers, the old com- 
mingled with the new; some of them indentures 
of apprenticeship, others receipts for money; 
no one of them is important, as bearing on the 
Shakespeare story. Several of them are in 
Latin. The earliest date is 1560, four years 
before the poet was born. One document 
is a memorandum "presenting" a couple of 
the wives of Stratford for slander of cer- 
tain other women, and quoting their bad 
language with startling fidelity. Another is a 
letter from a citizen of London, named Smart, 
establishing and endowing a free school in 
Stratford for teaching English, — the writer 
remarking that schools for the teaching of 



160 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Latin are numerous, while no school for teach- 
ing English exists, that he can discover. Those 
papers have been classified and arranged, but 
nothing directly pertinent to Shakespeare has 
been found in them. I saw a deed that bore 
the "mark" of Joan, sister of Mary Arden, 
Shakespeare's mother. 

An interesting Stratford figure, locally well 
known for a long time, was John Marshall, 
antiquary, who died on June 26, 1887. Mr. 
Marshall occupied the building next but one 
to the original New Place, on the north side, 
— the house once tenanted by Julius Shaw, one 
of the five witnesses to Shakespeare's will. 
Mr. Marshall sold Shakespeare souvenirs and 
quaint furniture. He had remarkable skill in 
carving, and his mind was stored with knowl- 
edge of Shakespeare antiquities and the tradi- 
tional lore of Stratford. His kindness, his 
eccentric ways, his elaborate forms of speech, 
and his artistic ingenuity commended him to 
the respect of all who knew him. He was "a 
character," — and in such a place as Stratford 
such quaint beings are appropriate and uncom- 



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STRATFORD GLEANINGS 161 

monly pleasing. He rests now, in an unmarked 
grave, in Trinity churchyard, close to the bank 
of the Avon, eastward of the stone that marks 
the sepulchre of Mary Pickering. He was well 
known to me, and we had many a talk about 
the antiquities of the town. Among my relics 
there was for some time (until, at last, I gave 
it to the eminent actor, Edwin Booth) a piece 
of wood, bearing this inscription: "Old Oak 
from Shakespeare's Birth-place, taken out of the 
building when it was Restored in 1858 by Mr. 
William Holtom, the contractor for the restora- 
tion, who supplied it to John Marshall, carver, 
Stratford-upon-Avon, and presented by him to 
W. Winter, August 27th, 1885, J. M." That 
relic is now possessed by The Players, in 
New York. Another valued souvenir of this 
quaint person, given by his widow to Richard 
Savage, — a fine carved goblet, made from the 
wood of Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, — came 
into my possession, as a birthday gift from 
Richard Savage, July 15, 1891, and went the 
same way. 

In the Washington Irving parlor of the 



162 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Red Horse the American traveller finds objects 
that are specially calculated to please his 
fancy and to deepen his interest in the place. 
Among them are the sexton's clock to which 
Irving refers, in his "Sketch Book," an auto- 
graph letter by him, another by Longfellow, a 
view of Irving's house, Sunnyside, and pictures 
of Junius B. Booth, Edwin Booth, the elder 
and the younger Joseph Jefferson (Rip Van 
Winkle), Mary Anderson, Ada Rehan, Ellis- 
ton, Farren, Salvini, Henry Irving, and Ellen 
Terry. To invest that valued room with an 
atmosphere at once literary and dramatic was 
the intention of its decorator, and that object 
has been accomplished. When Washington 
Irving visited Stratford and lodged at the 
Red Horse the "pretty chambermaid," to whom 
he alludes, in his genial account of that experi- 
ence, was Sally Garner, — then, in fact, a 
middle-aged woman and plain rather than 
pretty. The head waiter was William Webb. 
Both those persons lived to old age. Sally 
Garner was retired, on a pension, by Mr. 
Gardner, former proprietor of the Red Horse, 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 163 

and she died at Tanworth, and was buried 
there. Webb died at Stratford. He had been 
a waiter at the Red Horse for sixty years. 
His grave, in Stratford churchyard, remained 
unmarked, and it is one among the many that, 
unfortunately, were levelled and obliterated in 
1888, by order of the Rev. George Arbuthnot, 
then Vicar, since removed to Coventry. The 
grave of Charles Frederick Green, author of 
an account of Shakespeare and the Crab Tree, 
— that figment of folly, set afloat by Samuel 
Ireland, — was made in the angle near the west 
door of Trinity Church, but it has been covered, 
flat tombstone and all, with gravel. 

Reverence for memorials of other days is 
not without its practical influence. Among 
good results of it is the restoration t of the 
ancient timber front and the quaint gables of 
the Shakespeare Hotel, which, already interest- 
ing by its association with Garrick and the 
Jubilee of September 7, 1769, has become one 
of the most picturesque and representative 
buildings in Stratford. There is a disposition 
among natives of Shakespeare's town to save 



164 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

everything that is associated, however remotely, 
with his name. Charles Frederick Loggin 
possessed a lock and key that once were 
affixed to one of the doors in New Place, and 
also a sundial that reposed upon a pedestal 
in New Place garden, in Shakespeare's time. 
The lock is made of brass; the key of iron, 
with an ornamented handle, of pretty design, 
but broken. On the lock appears an inscrip- 
tion stating that it was "taken from New 
Place in the year 1759, and preserved by 
John Lord, Esq." The sundial is made of 
copper, and upon its surface are Roman 
numerals ranged around the outer edge of 
the circle that encloses its rays. The corners 
of the plate are broken, and one side of it is 
bent. This injury was done to it by thieves, 
who wrenched it from its setting, on a night 
in 1759, and were running away with it when 
they were captured and deprived of their 
plunder. The sundial also bears an inscription, 
certifying that it was preserved by Mr. Lord. 
New Place garden was at one time owned by 
one of Mr. Loggin's relatives, and from that 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 165 

former owner those Shakespeare relics were 
derived. Shakespeare's hand may have touched 
that lock, and Shakespeare's eyes may have 
looked upon that dial. 

Another remote relic of Shakespeare's time 
is the shape of the foundation of Bishopton 
church, which remains traced, by ridges of vel- 
vet sod, in a green field a little to the northwest 
of Stratford, in the direction of Wilmcote, — 
the birthplace of Shakespeare's mother, Mary 
Arden. That church was destroyed about 
1800. The house in Wilmcote, in which, as 
tradition declares, the poet's mother was born, 
stands near an entrance to the village, and 
is conspicuous for its quaint dormer windows 
and its mellow colors. Wilmcote is rougher 
in aspect than many of the villages of War- 
wickshire, and the country immediately around 
it is bleak, but the hedges are full of wild- 
flowers and are haunted by many birds, and 
the wide, green, lonesome fields, especially 
when you see them toward evening, possess 
that air of melancholy solitude, dream-like 
rather than sad, which always strongly sways 



166 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the imaginative mind. Inside the Mary Arden 
cottage I saw nothing remarkable, except the 
massive old timbers. That house will, no doubt, 
one day be purchased and added to the other 
several Trusts, — of Shakespeare's Birthplace, 
the Museum, and New Place. The Hathaway 
cottage was thus acquired in March, 1892. 

The beautiful Guild Chapel needs care. 
The hand of restoration should, indeed, touch 
it reverently, but restored it must be, at no 
distant day, for every autumn storm shakes 
down fragments of its fretted masonry and 
despoils the venerable grandeur of that ancient 
tower on which Shakespeare must often have 
gazed, from the windows of his home. It 
is unfortunate that the restoration of that fine 
old church was not undertaken while yet the 
Rev. R. S. De Courcy Laffan was Head- 
Master of the Grammar School and pastor of 
the Guild, for then it would have been effected 
under the direction of a man of noble spirit, 
rare ability, sound scholarship and fine taste, 
a reverent Shakespearean, and one by whom 
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STRATFORD GLEANINGS 167 

ing done amiss. Liberal in thought, stable in 
character, simple, sincere, and notable for 
sensibility and worth, that preacher is one of 
the most imposing figures in the pulpit of 
his time. Mr. Laffan resigned his office in 
Stratford in June, 1895, and became Presi- 
dent of Cheltenham College, from which posi- 
tion he retired, to take charge of a parish in 
London. 

An interesting, modern feature of Strat- 
ford is Lord Ronald Gower's statue of Shake- 
speare, erected in October, 1888, in the 
Memorial garden. That work is infelicitous 
in its site and not fortunate in all of its 
details, but in some particulars it is fine. 
Upon a huge pedestal appears the full-length 
bronze figure of the poet, seated, while at 
the four corners of the base are bronze 
effigies of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Henry the 
Fifth, and Falstaff. Hamlet is the expression 
of a noble ideal. The face and figure, wasted 
by misery, are full of thought. The type 
of man thus embodied will at once be 
recognized, — an imperial, tender, gracious, but 



168 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

darkly introspective nature, subjugated by 
hopeless grief and by vain brooding over the 
mystery of life and death. Lady Macbeth 
is depicted in her sleep-walking, and, although 
the figure is treated in a conventional manner, 
it conveys the idea of remorse and of physical 
emaciation from suffering, and likewise the 
sense of being haunted and accursed. Prince 
Henry is represented as he may have appeared 
when putting on his dying father's royal 
crown. The figure is lithe, graceful, and 
spirited, the pose is true and the action is 
natural, but the personality is deficient 
of distinction. Falstaff appears as an obese 
type of gross, chuckling humor. The intel- 
lect and predominant character of the man 
are not indicated. The figures are dwarfed, 
furthermore, by the huge size of the pillar 
against which they stand. The statue of Shake- 
speare shows a man of solid self -concentration 
and adamantine will, an observer, of universal 
view and incessant vigilance. The chief feature 
of it is the piercing look of the eyes. This is a 
man who sees, ponders, and records. Imagi- 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 169 

nation and sensibility, on the other hand, are 
not suggested. The face lacks fine modelling: it 
is as smooth as the face of a child. The man 
who had gained Shakespeare's obvious experi- 
ence may have risen to a composure not to be 
ruffled by anything that this world can do, to 
bless or to ban a human life; but the record of 
his struggle must have been written in his face. 
This may be a fine statue of a practical 
thinker; it is not an adequate presentment of 
Shakespeare. The structure stands on the 
south side of the Memorial building and within 
a few feet of it, so that it is almost sub- 
merged by what was intended for its back- 
ground. It would show to better advantage 
if it were placed further to the south, looking 
down the long reach of the Avon, toward 
Shakespeare's church. The form of the poet 
could then be seen from the spot on which 
he died, while his face would still look, as it 
does now, toward his tomb. 

There is a collection of autographs of 
visitors to the Shakespeare Birthplace that 
was gathered many years since by Mary 



170 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Hornby, custodian of that cottage (she who 
whitewashed the walls, in order to obliterate 
the autographs of visitors written upon them, 
when she was removed from her office, in 
1820), and this was in the possession of her 
granddaughter, Mrs. Eliza Smith, of Strat- 
ford. Many distinguished names have been 
taken from it, among others that of Lord 
Byron. Mrs. Eliza Smith died, at No. 56 
Ely Street, Stratford, on February 24, 1893, 
aged sixty-eight, and the relics that she pos- 
sessed passed to a relative, at Northampton, by 
whose authority they were sold, in London, in 
June, 1896. The mania for obtaining souvenirs 
of Stratford antiquity is remarkable. Mention 
has been made of an unknown lady who came 
to the birth-room of Shakespeare, and, after 
begging in vain for a piece of the woodwork 
or of the stone, knelt and wiped the floor 
with her glove, which then she carefully 
secreted, declaring that she would, at least, 
possess some of the dust of that sacred 
chamber. It is a sincere sentiment, though 
not a rational one, which impels devotional 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 171 

persons to such conduct as that: the elemental 
feeling, doubtless, is one of reverence; but the 
entire Shakespeare Birthplace would soon 
disappear if such a passion always were prac- 
tically gratified. 

Among the relics preserved in the Shake- 
speare Memorial Library are the manuscript 
of Charles Mackay's treatise on "Obscure 
Words in Shakespeare's Plays," and a human 
skull that was used as "Yorick's skull, the 
king's jester," by John Philip Kemble and 
also by Edmund Kean, when playing Hamlet. 
The store of relics in Stratford is consider- 
able, and some of them are of much interest. 
A fine autograph of Robert Burns is owned 
by Mr. William Hutchings, of that town, and 
the original manuscript of the letter that Dr. 
Johnson addressed, June 26, 1777, to Dr. 
Dodd, the forger, then under sentence of 
death, is one of the possessions of Alderman 
Bird. 

There are credulous persons who accept as 
authentic a painting which is called the Ely 
Palace Portrait of Shakespeare. The late 



172 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Henry Graves, long noted as a connoisseur 
of art, believed in it and declared that he 
valued it at five hundred guineas or at any 
fancy price above that figure. The Ely 
Palace Portrait of Shakespeare was discovered, 
in London, and was bought, by Bishop Tur- 
ton, of Ely, in 1846. It purports to have been 
an heirloom in a family resident in Little 
Britain and personally known to Shakespeare, 
and the story of it declares that it was painted 
in Shakespeare's time. In contour and ex- 
pression it bears resemblance to the Droeshout 
likeness: almost all the putative likenesses of 
Shakespeare reveal a striking and significant 
resemblance to either the Droeshout engraving 
or the Gerrard Johnson bust. The face in 
the Ely portrait is thin and pale, and the 
eyes are small. In May, 1891, — so runs the 
tale, — this portrait was, for the first time in 
many years, taken out of its frame, in order 
that the covering glass might be cleaned, and 
then the following inscription was observed, on 
the left-hand upper corner of the canvas: 
"AE. 39. X 1603." The existence of that 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 173 

inscription had not before been known at the 
Birthplace, but inquiry ascertained that the 
inscription was known to Bishop Turton when 
he bought the picture, and doubtless it had 
an effect upon his judgment of its authen- 
ticity. The Ely Palace Portrait is preserved 
at the Birthplace, where it is an interesting 
feature in the collection that was made for 
the museum department by William Oakes 
Hunt and J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. 

Among Shakespeare relics that long sur- 
vived in Stratford, but have disappeared, was 
the old house called Avonbank. That build- 
ing stood next to the north gate of Trinity 
churchyard, on land forming part of the 
estate of the late Charles Edward Flower, 
and in the town records it was designated, 
"the House of St. Mary in old town." 
Thomas Green, who has been variously styled 
"the poet's cousin" and "the poet's intimate 
friend" (he was town-clerk of Stratford from 
1614 to 1617), lived there, and, accordingly, 
it is reasonable to suppose that the house was 
one of Shakespeare's resorts. Each room in 



174 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

it had a name. One was called "the church- 
yard room"; one "the bee-hive"; one "the 
end"; one "the middle"; and one "the bird's 
nest." 

Another interesting relic that has disap- 
peared is the old Market Cross of Stratford, 
a combination of building and religious 
emblem. That structure, often seen by Shake- 
speare, was as old as the early time of Queen 
Elizabeth. It stood close by the southwest 
corner of High Street and Wood Street, and 
was used as a market. At a meeting of the 
Common Council of Stratford, held August 2, 
1794, it was "agreed that the house at the 
Cross, late in the possession of Mr. Robert 
Mander, be wholly taken down and laid open 
to the road; that Mr. Taylor take down the 
house and be careful to put the materials by 
for the use of the corporation." The Cross 
was taken down and removed in one day, 
Saturday, August 11, 1821, and its base was 
finally placed in the centre walk of the Shake- 
speare Birthplace garden. The foundation 
stone of the ugly market-house now standing 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 175 

at the junction of Wood Street and Henley 
Street was laid by George Morris, Mayor of 
Stratford, on the coronation day of King 
George the Fourth. 

The restoration of the Stratford Guild 
Hall and Grammar School has been made 
with excellent judgment and taste. That 
good work was planned and begun by the late 
Charles Edward Flower (1830-1892), and it 
was carried forward under the superintendence 
of his widow, whose devotion to every task 
and purpose cherished by him was that of 
reverent memory and affectionate zeal. She 
also has passed away, dying July 21, 1908. 
The visitor to the Guild Hall sees it now much 
as it was when Shakespeare saw it, when a 
boy. It is a room fifty-two feet long by 
eighteen feet nine inches wide, and eight feet 
eight inches high. Three sides of it are 
panelled, — the panels resting upon a base of 
timber and rock. The ceiling is of timber 
and plaster and the floor of stone. One 
massive timber runs along the centre of the 
ceiling, from north to south, and with that 



176 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the other timbers of the ceiling run parallel, 
— the intermediate spaces being filled with 
plaster, finished with a wave-like surface. 
On the west side are four spandrels, and 
also, high in the wall, nine windows, each 
about four feet by two, set near together and 
filled with small, leaded, diamond panes of or- 
dinary glass. At the north end is a large oak 
door, made in imitation of the doors of old, 
opening into a passage leading from the 
street, on the west, to the quadrangle and 
pedagogue's house, on the east. Upon the 
east wall there are four spandrels, and there 
is a brick chimney-breast, and near that is 
a large casement, made of green and white 
glass, through which you can look into the 
quadrangle. At the south end there are thir- 
teen large, and three small, upright timbers, 
stained black, — as, indeed, most of the timbers 
are, whether new or old, — and between those 
the plaster reveals traces of ancient frescoes. 
Five panels of the fresco are set in a large 
oak frame and are glazed. The walls, above 
the panels, are plastered and are finished with 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 177 

a smooth, cream-colored surface. The north 
end of the hall adjoins the venerable Chapel 
of the Guild. In the east wall, near the 
north end, there is a door. In the ceiling 
there are thirty-seven pieces of timber. At the 
south end a bit of the original timber, once 
ornamented with gay color, still faintly visible, 
has been left untouched. Presentations of 
Miracle Plays and Mysteries were effected in 
that hall, in the time of Shakespeare's boy- 
hood, and it may be true, as is believed, that 
the first dramatic performances the lad ever 
saw were seen by him in that room. As I 
sat there, on a sombre Sunday morning, alone 
and listening to the rain upon the roof, the 
chapel bell suddenly began to ring, and I 
remembered the tradition that the bell of this 
chapel, which had sounded in his ears when he 
was a schoolboy, was tolled at his funeral. 

The schoolroom is over the Guild Hall, and 
an oak partition of great age divides it into 
two parts. The timbers supporting the roof, 
massive and rugged, cross the room at an 
altitude of about ten feet, and above them is 



178 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

a network of rafters. The staircase leading 
to the schoolroom is of oak, and very rich, 
and there are fine oak doors on the east side, 
and lattices on the west. On the south wall 
hangs a portrait of Henry Irving, as Hamlet. 
East of the southern branch of the school- 
room, and opening from it, is a quaint room 
called the Council Chamber, now used as a 
library. The roof, rising to a peak, is wrought 
of old timbers, bare, massive, and strange. 
An ancient oak table, much hacked by the 
jackknives of many generations of boys, stands 
in the centre of that room, together with some 
oak benches, while around the walls are book- 
cases, containing about one thousand volumes, 
and at the north side is a dais sustaining a 
great chair and a reading-desk, above which 
hangs a copy of the Chandos portrait of 
Shakespeare, — the original of which, long kept 
at the Bethnal Green Museum, is now in the 
National Gallery, in London. From the coun- 
cil room a narrow, crooked staircase gives 
access to a tiny room beneath the eaves, 
of the same general character, — probably a 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 179 

priest's cell, in ecclesiastical times, but used 
now as a storeroom and study. The outside 
of the building is timber-crossed, with inter- 
stices of plaster, the roof being covered with 
red tiles. In the rear stands the little cottage 
in which dwelt Shakespeare's schoolmaster, 
Walter Roche, — a structure, now restored, con- 
taining a quaint, charming room, used as a 
study by the Head-Master of the Guild. At 
one time it was thought that this building, 
one of the oldest houses in Stratford, must 
be sacrificed, but it has been deftly set upon 
new foundations and thus preserved. Human 
bones were discovered in the earth, while the 
work of restoration was in progress, near to 
that building, — the remains of some ecclesiastic 
of long ago. In its renovated condition the 
ancient Grammar School of the Guild, while 
it reveals the care of the restorer, retains 
its aspect of venerable antiquity, and it is 
one of the most precious historic shrines of 
Stratford. 

Some excitement was caused in Stratford, 
in June, 1894, by the discovery that the doors 



180 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

of the north porch of Trinity Church had 
not only been removed from their place but 
had been sold, and for a time the matter was 
a theme of wonder. The doors had long been 
disused, but there they had hung for cen- 
turies, — useless but venerable, — and nobody 
wished them to be disturbed. The Vicar of 
Stratford, however, caused them to be taken 
away. The porch is provided with an iron 
grille, and the removal of the doors, which 
had for years stood open, served to reveal 
more clearly the proportions and peculiarities 
of its interior. There was no complaint, and 
the doors might long have reposed, unnoted, 
among the rubbish in the churchyard, but for 
their sudden appearance as a commodity of 
commerce. That appearance was precipitated 
by one of the church- war dens. A quantity 
of refuse wood and stone was to be sold, 
the ancient oaken doors, massive and pon- 
derous, stood in the way, and so, with a word, 
they were despatched. Such things are done 
more in heedlessness than with purpose. The 
most frugal-minded of church-wardens, con- 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS 181 

sidering what Stratford is and upon what 
mainly it thrives, would scarcely have sold 
those church doors, had he paused to reflect 
that the gaze of Shakespeare may have rested 
on them, and that therefore they belong to 
the story of the poet. Sold they were, and 
conveyed away, and but that the fact became 
public and attracted the attention of the 
Bishop of Worcester, they would not have 
come back. A mandate from that authority 
declared the sale invalid, and the church-warden 
was compelled to recover the alienated relics. 



X. 

THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN. 

American interest in Stratford-upon-Avon 
springs out of a love for the works of Shake- 
speare as profound and passionate as that of 
the most sensitive and reverent of the poet's 
countrymen. It is, in part, to Americans 
that Stratford owes the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial, for while the land on which it stands 
was given by that public-spirited citizen of 
Stratford, Charles Edward Flower, and while 
money to pay for the building of it was 
freely contributed by wealthy residents of 
Warwickshire, and by men of all ranks 
throughout England, the gifts and labors 
of Americans were not lacking to that good 
cause. Edwin Booth was one of the earliest 
contributors to the Memorial fund, and the 
names of Herman Vezin, M. D. Conway, 

182 



THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN 183 

W. H. Reynolds, and Louise Chandler Moul- 
ton appear in the first list of its subscribers. 
Kate Field worked for its advancement, with 
remarkable energy and practical success. Mary 
Anderson acted for its benefit, on August 29, 
1885, as also, later, did Ada Rehan and Augus- 
tin Daly's company, under that generous 
manager's able direction. In the church of the 
Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare's dust is 
buried, a stained window, illustrative, scrip- 
turally, of that solemn epitome of human life 
which the poet makes in the speech of Jaques 
on the seven ages of man, evinces the practical 
devotion of the American pilgrim. 

Wherever in Stratford you come upon any- 
thing associated, even remotely, with the name 
and fame of Shakespeare, there you will find 
the gracious tokens of American homage. 
The libraries of the Birthplace and of the 
Memorial contain gifts of American books. 
New Place and Anne Hathaway's cottage are 
never omitted from the American traveller's 
round of visitations and monetary tribute. The 
romantic Shakespeare Hotel, with its rambling 



184 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

passages, its quaint rooms named after Shake- 
speare's characters, its antique bar parlor, and 
the rich collection of autographs and pictures, 
made by the late Mrs. Justins; the Town Hall, 
adorned with Gainsborough's expressive por- 
trait of Garrick, to which no engraving does 
justice; the Clopton bridge, Lucy's mill, the 
footpath across fields and roads to Shottery, 
and the picturesque Mary Arden Cottage at 
Wilmcote, — each and every one of them 
receives, in turn, the tribute of the wandering 
American, and each repays him, in charming 
suggestiveness of association, in high thought, 
and in the lasting impulse of poetic reverie. 
At the Red Horse, where Mr. William Gard- 
ner Colbourne maintains the traditions of old- 
fashioned English hospitality, he finds his home, 
well pleased to muse and dream while the night 
deepens and the clock in the neighboring tower 
murmurs drowsily in its sleep. Those who will 
can mock at his enthusiasm. He would not 
feel it but for the spell that Shakespeare's 
genius has cast upon the world. He ought to 
be glad and grateful that he can feel that spell, 



THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN 185 

and, since he does feel it, nothing could be 
more natural than his desire to signify that, 
although born far away from the old home of 
his race, and separated from it by a vast wilder- 
ness of stormy ocean, he still has his part in 
the priceless legacy of Shakespeare, the treasure 
and the glory of the English tongue. 

A significant token of this American senti- 
ment, and a permanent object of interest to 
the pilgrim in Stratford, is supplied by the 
gift of a drinking fountain made to that town, 
on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, by 
George W. Childs, of Philadelphia. It never 
was a surprise to hear of that benefactor's 
activity and generosity in doing good, it was 
only an accustomed pleasure, — now, like many 
other pleasures, only a memory: Mr. Childs 
died, at his home, in Philadelphia, February 3, 
1894. With fine-art testimonials in the Old 
World as well as in the New, his name will long 
be honorably associated. In 1886 he pre- 
sented a window of stained glass to West- 
minster Abbey, to commemorate, in Poets' 
Corner, George Herbert and William Cowper. 



186 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

In 1888 he gave to St. Margaret's Church, 
Westminster, a pictorial window commemo- 
rative of Milton. The fountain at Stratford 
was dedicated on October 17, 1887, with appro- 
priate ceremonies, conducted by Sir Arthur 
Hodgson, of Clopton, then mayor, now 
deceased, and amid general rejoicing. Henry 
Irving, then leader of the English stage, and 
now remembered as the most illustrious of 
English actors since the age of Garrick, 
delivered a felicitous address, and read a poem 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The countrymen 
of Mr. Childs, not less interested in the struc- 
ture than the community that it was intended 
to honor and benefit, saw with satisfaction 
and pride his beneficent, opulent offering to a 
town which is hallowed for them by exalted 
associations, and endeared by delightful mem- 
ories and they sympathized with the motive 
and feeling that prompted him to offer his 
gift as one among many memorials of the 
fiftieth year of the reign of good Queen 
Victoria. It is not every man who knows 
how to give with grace, and the good deed is 



THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN 187 

"done double" that is done at the right time. 
Stratford had long been in need of such a 
fountain as Mr. Childs presented, and there- 
fore it satisfied a public want at the same 
time that it served a purpose of ornamenta- 
tion, and helped to strengthen a bond of 
international sympathy. Rother Street, in 
which the structure stands, is the most con- 
siderable open place in Stratford, situated near 
the centre of the town, on the west side. 
There, as also at the intersection of High 
and Bridge streets, which are the principal 
thoroughfares of the city, the farmers, at 
stated intervals, range their beasts and wagons 
and hold a market. It is easy to see why 
Rother Street, embellished with this monu- 
ment, which combines a clock-tower, a place 
of rest for man, and commodious drinking- 
troughs for horses, cattle, dogs, and sheep, has 
become the agricultural centre of the region. 

The base of the monument is made of 
Peterhead granite, while the superstructure is 
of gray stone, from Bolton, Yorkshire. The 
height of the tower is fifty feet. On the north 



188 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

side a stream of water, flowing from a bronze 
spout, falls into a polished granite basin. On 
the south side a door opens into the interior. 
The decorations include sculptures of the arms 
of Great Britain alternated with the eagle and 
stripes of the United States. In the second 
story of the tower, lighted by glazed arches, 
is placed a clock, and on the outward faces 
of the third story appear four dials. There 
are four turrets, surrounding a central spire, 
each surmounted by a gilded vane. The 
inscriptions on the base, devised by Sir Arthur 
Hodgson, are these: 



The gift of an American citizen, George W. Childs, 

of Philadelphia, to the town of Shakespeare, 

in the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. 



In her days every man shall eat, in safety 
Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing 
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbors. 
God shall be truly known: and those about her 



THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN 189 

From her shall read the perfect ways of honor, 
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood. 
Henry VIII., Act V. Scene 4. 



in 

Honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire. 
Timon of Athens, Act I. Scene % 

rv 

Ten thousand honors and blessings on the bard who 
has thus gilded the dull realities of life with innocent 
illusions. — Washington Irving's Stratford-on-Avon. 

Stratford, fortunate in many things, is 
especially fortunate in being situated at a con- 
siderable distance from the main line of any 
railway. Two railroads skirt the town, but 
both are branches, travel upon them has not 
become too frequent, and Stratford still retains 
a measure of isolation, and consequently a 
flavor of quaintness. Antique customs are 
still prevalent there, and odd characters can 
still be encountered. The current of village 
gossip flows with incessant vigor, and nothing 
happens in the place that is not thoroughly 



190 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

discussed by its inhabitants. I have, on many 
occasions, observed the gratitude of the War- 
wickshire people to the American philanthropist. 
Time will only deepen the respect with which 
his name is cherished. In England, as a pious 
custom, the record of good deeds is made 
permanent, not alone by imperishable symbols, 
but in the hearts of the people. The inhab- 
itants of Warwickshire, guarding and main- 
taining their Stratford Fountain, will not 
forget by whom it was given. Wherever you 
go, in the British Islands, you find memorials 
of the Past and of individuals who have 
done good deeds in their time, and you 
also find that those memorials are respected. 
Many such emblems might be indicated. 
Each of them takes its place in the regard 
and gradually becomes entwined with the 
experience of the whole community. So it is 
with the Childs Fountain at Stratford. It 
stands in the track of travel between Banbury, 
Shipston, Stratford, and Birmingham, and 
many weary men and horses pause beside it 
every day, for a moment of refreshment and 






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THE CHILDS FOUNTAIN 191 

rest. On festival days it is hung with garlands, 
while around it the air is glad with music. 
If the founder of it had heen capable of an 
egotistical thought, he could have taken no way 
better or more certain, for the perpetuation of 
his name in the affectionate esteem of one of 
the most sedate communities in the world. 

Autumn in England, and all the country 
ways of lovely Warwickshire are strewn with 
fallen leaves: but the cool winds are sweet 
and bracing, the dark waters of the Avon, 
shimmering in mellow sunlight and frequent 
shadow, flow softly past the hallowed church, 
and the reaped, gleaned, and empty meadows 
invite to many a healthful ramble, far and 
wide over the country of Shakespeare. It is 
a good time to be there; and now and always 
hereafter it will be deeply pleasing to every 
American explorer of haunted Warwickshire 
to see, among the emblems of poetry and 
romance which are its chief glory, this token 
of American sentiment and friendship, the 
Fountain of Stratford. 



XI. 

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 

The renovation of the Shakespeare Church, 
which had been in progress for some time, 
was completed, or nearly completed, in 1892, 
and only a few old things were left intact in 
that sacred building. The venerable aspect of 
that church could not, indeed, be entirely 
despoiled, even by the superserviceable zeal 
and regulative spirit of convention. Something 
of venerable majesty must still survive, in 
the gray, mossy stones of that massive tower 
and in the gloomy battlements of nave and 
chancel through which the winds of night sigh 
softly over Shakespeare's dust. The cold 
sublimity of the ancient fabric, with its 
environment of soft and gentle natural beauty 
and its associations of poetic renown, can 
never be wholly dispelled. Much has been 

192 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 193 

done, however, to make the place modern and 
conventional. The appearance of the church, 
especially in its interior, has been materially- 
changed. A few of the changes were essen- 
tial, and those may have been made wisely, 
and all of the changes have been made with 
mechanical skill, if not always with taste. A 
few more touches, and the inside of the 
ancient building will be as neat and prim 
as a box of candles. The avowed object of 
the restoration was to make the church 
appear as it appeared when it was built, and 
before it had acquired any association what- 
ever, and that object has been measurably 
accomplished; but a radical change there was 
an injury. 

Now that so many old things have been 
made new, the devotees of Shakespeare may 
be asked what it is of which they think they 
have reason to complain. Their answer is 
ready. They wanted to have the church 
repaired; they did not want to have it rebuilt. 
The Shakespeare Church is a national monu- 
ment. More than that, — it is a literary shrine 



194 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

for all the world. There was an indescribable 
poetic charm about the old edifice, which had 
been bestowed upon it, not by art but by 
time. That charm should have been left 
untouched. Nothing should ever have been 
done to impair it. The building had acquired 
character. It had become venerable with age, 
storied with association, and picturesque with 
quaintness. The suns and the storms of 
centuries had left their traces on its walls. 
The actions and sufferings, the inspirations 
and eccentricities of successive generations had 
impressed themselves upon its fabric. It had 
been made individual and splendid, — like a 
visage of some noble old saint of mediaeval 
times, a face lined and seamed by thought, 
dignified by experience, sublimated by con- 
quered passion. Above all, it had enshrined, 
for nearly three hundred years, the ashes of 
the greatest poet that ever lived. All that 
was asked was that it should be left alone. 
To repair it in certain particulars became a 
necessity, but to alter it was to do an irrepa- 
rable harm. That harm has been done; and 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 195 

it is that which the Shakespeare enthusiast 
resents and deplores. 

On the occasion of a visit to the church, 
soon after its restoration, I went into the 
chancel and stood there, alone, in front of 
the altar, and looked around, in amazement 
and sorrow. The aspect of that chancel is 
no longer ancient; it is new. The altar has 
been moved from its place against the east 
wall, beneath the great window, and has been 
elevated upon a double pedestal. The floor 
around it has been paved with encaustic tiles, 
of hideous brown and yellow. Almost all the 
mural tablets upon the north and south walls 
have been carried away, and they can now be 
found dispersed in the transepts, while their 
place is filled by a broad expanse of wooden 
panels, extending from the backs of the 
miserere stalls upward to the sills of the 
windows. The stalls themselves have been 
repaired, but that was necessary, because the 
wooden foundations of them had become much 
decayed. And, finally, the stone screens that 
filled half of the window back of Shakespeare's 



196 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

monument and half of the window back of 
the busts of Judith Combe and her lover 
have been removed. The resultant effect, — 
which might be excellent in a modern hotel, 
but which is deplorable in this church, — is 
that of enterprise and novelty, the new broom 
and modern "improvements." Those improve- 
ments, no doubt, are fine in their way, but if 
ever there was a place on earth where they 
are inappropriate, that place is the Shake- 
speare Church. They suit well with it as a 
place of ecclesiastical ritual, and if the church 
were merely that, nobody would greatly care 
even if it were made as bright as a brass 
band; but since it is the literary shrine of 
the world, no one who appreciates its intrinsic 
value can fail to regret that the ruthless hand of 
innovation has been permitted to degrade it, 
in any degree whatever, to the level of the 
commonplace. 

When Dean Balsall (obiit 1491) built the 
chancel of that church, in 1480, he placed it 
against a little stone building, the remnant 
of an ancient monastery (as trustworthy 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 197 

antiquarian scholars believe) which was long 
used as a priest's study, and under which 
was a charnel-house or crypt. (A mass of 
human bones was removed from that crypt 
about 1886, and buried in a pit in the church- 
yard.) The stone screen in the lower half 
of the Shakespeare window was necessary as 
a part of the sustaining wall between the old 
structure and the new one, and later it was 
found useful as a background for the Shake- 
speare monument. Against that screen the 
bust of the poet was placed by his children 
and his friends, and as they saw, knew, and 
left it, so it should have been preserved and 
perpetuated. So it long remained, but the 
pilgrim to Stratford church hereafter will 
never see the bust of Shakespeare as it was 
seen by his daughters. A link that bound us 
to the Past has been broken, and no skill of 
man can now avail to mend it. Back of 
the bust has been placed a stained window, 
commemorative of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, 
the renowned Shakespeare scholar. That was 
put in on July 27, 1891, late in the afternoon, 



198 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

and that same night it was my fortune to 
have a view of it, from within and from 
without. The light of the gloaming had not 
yet faded. The bell-ringers were at practice 
in the tower, and the sweet notes of the 
"Blue Bells of Scotland" were wafted down- 
ward in a shower of silver melody upon the 
still air of haunted chancel and darkening 
nave. Enough of light yet lingered to dis- 
play the fresh embellishment, and I examined 
it closely and viewed it for a long time. It 
is exceedingly ugly — being prosaic in design 
and coarse in color. The principal object in 
its composition is the head of a bull, which, 
engirt with flames, rests upon a heap of 
stones, encircled with a rivulet of ultramarine 
blue. Upon each side, in contrasted groups, 
stand several figures, two or three of them 
visible at full length, but most of them 
visible only in part. Of human heads the 
picture contains eleven. The chief colors are 
blue, purple, bronze, scarlet, and gray. The 
action of the principal figures is spirited and 
the treatment of the faces shows artistic skill, 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 199 

— those qualities being the merits of the work. 
As a memorial, the window means nothing, 
while its implied reference to one of the 
stories of Jewish history is unimportant. The 
inscription is from the Bible: "And with 
the stones he built an altar in the name 
of the Lord." The meaning of this is 
figurative and it is reverent and irreproach- 
able; yet the observer who reads that sen- 
tence can scarcely repress a smile when he 
remembers that the stones which were taken 
from the Shakespeare window, to make room 
for this pretentious deformity, now form a 
channel for hot-air pipes under the chancel 
floor. 

The necessity for saving a relic here and 
there seems not to have been ignored. The 
stone reading-desk that long adorned the 
Shakespeare Church was sold to a stone-mason 
in the Warwick road, and the top of the 
stone pulpit was thrown away, but the broken, 
battered font, at which, possibly, the poet 
was baptized, has been placed on the pillar 
that formerly supported the stone pulpit, and 



200 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

that structure can be seen, in the southwest 
corner of the nave. There also have been 
placed the three carved canopies of stone that 
formerly impended over the sedalia in the 
chapel of Thomas a' Becket, — now occupied 
by the organ works. In the south transept 
stand two large gravestones, the memorials 
of former vicars, which were removed from 
the chancel, — where they ought to have been 
left. The lately discovered (1890) gravestone 
of Judith Combe has been placed in the 
chancel floor, beneath her bust. In making 
repairs, the vault of Dean Balsall, which is 
near to Shakespeare's grave, was broken open, 
and it was inspected, if not explored, but the 
remains were not disturbed. Let us be thank- 
ful for so much forbearance. A time was 
when the former vicar of Stratford, Rev. 
George Arbuthnot, gave his consent that the 
grave of Shakespeare might be opened, and 
there are uneasy spirits still extant whom 
idle curiosity would quickly impel to that 
act of desecration. Whatever remnant sur- 
vives, therefore, of the spirit of reverence in the 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 201 

ecclesiastical authority of Stratford ought to 
be prized and cherished. 

Readers who wish to know why it is thought 
by some persons that the grave of Shake- 
speare ought to be explored will find the 
dubious reasons set forth in a book called 
"Shakespeare's Bones," written by C. M. 
Ingleby, LL.D., and published in 1883. Dr. 
Ingleby has collected many striking facts with 
regard to the explorations of other tombs. He 
appears to think it probable that the relics of 
Shakespeare have already been rifled, but that 
is conjecture. His assertion that a new stone 
was laid over Shakespeare's grave about the 
year 1880 is supported by the authority of 
Halliwell-Phillipps. 



XII. 

RAMBLES IN ARDEN. 

The traveller who hurries through War- 
wickshire, — as American travellers generally 
do, — appreciates imperfectly the things that 
he sees, and does not know how much he 
loses, from lack of a leisurely survey of that 
picturesque region. The customary course is 
to lodge at the comfortable Red Horse, in 
Stratford-upon-Avon, and from that cosey 
habitation to proceed, in a carriage, along a 
route that ought to be traversed on foot, to 
the Shakespeare Birthplace, the Grammar 
School and the Guild Chapel, the relics of 
New Place, Trinity Church and the Shake- 
speare graves in its chancel, Anne Hathaway's 
cottage, at Shottery, and the Shakespeare 
Memorial Library and Theatre. When seen 
under favorable conditions those are impressive 

202 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 203 

sights, to the lover of Shakespeare; but when 
you have seen all of them, you have only 
begun to feel the charm of Stratford. It is 
only by living in the town, making yourself 
familiar with it in all its moods, viewing it 
in storm as well as in sunshine, roaming 
through its quaint streets in the lonely hours 
of the night, sailing up and down the beau- 
tiful Avon, driving and walking in the green 
lanes that twine about it for many miles in 
every direction, and so becoming a part of 
its actual being, that you obtain a genuine 
knowledge of that delightful place. Famil- 
iarity, in this case, does not breed contempt. 
The worst you will ever learn of Stratford 
is that gossip thrives in it, that its mentality 
is sometimes narrow and sleepy, and that it 
is heavily ridden by the ecclesiastical establish- 
ment. You will not find anything that can 
detract from the impression of beauty and 
repose made upon your mind by the sweet 
retirement of its situation, the majesty of its 
venerable monuments, and the opulent, diver- 
sified associations of its rural and historical 



204 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

environment. On the contrary, the more you 
know of those charms the more you will love 
the town, and the greater will be the benefit 
of thought and spiritual exaltation that you 
will derive from your knowledge of it, and 
hence it is important that the American 
traveller should be counselled, for his own 
sake, to live at least a little time in Stratford, 
instead of treating it as an incident of his 
journey. 

The occasion of a garden party at the rectory 
of a clerical friend at Butler's Marston gave 
opportunity to see one of the many pic- 
turesque, happy homes with which Warwick- 
shire abounds. The lawns there are ample 
and sumptuous. The dwelling and the 
church, which are contiguous, are bowered in 
great trees. From the terraces a lovely view 
can be obtained of richly colored and finely 
cultivated fields, stretching away toward Edge- 
hill, which lies southeast from Stratford-upon- 
Avon, about sixteen miles away, and marks 
the beginning of the Vale of the Red Horse — 
so called because of the figure of the horse 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 205 

which appears on the hill-side, near to Piller- 
ton village, cut in the red clay. In the 
churchyard at Marston are the gray, lichen- 
covered remains of one of those ancient crosses 
from the steps of which the monks preached, 
in the early days of the Roman Catholic 
Church, — relics deeply interesting for what 
they suggest of the people and the life of 
earlier times. A fine specimen of the ancient 
cross can be seen at Henley-in-Arden, a few 
miles northwest of Stratford, where it stands, 
in mouldering majesty, in the centre of the 
village, — strangely inharmonious with the little 
shops and numerous inns of which that long, 
straggling town is composed. The tower of 
the church at Butler's Marston, a gray, grim 
structure, was built in the eleventh century, 
a period of much ecclesiastical activity in the 
British Islands. Within it I found a fine 
pulpit, of carved oak, dark with age, of the 
time of King James the First. There are 
many commemorative stones in the church, on 
one of which appears this lovely apostrophe 
to a girl deceased: 



206 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Sleep, gentle soul, and wait thy Maker's will! 
Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still. 

The village of Butler's Marston, — a little 
group of cottages clustered on the margin 
of a tiny stream and almost hidden in a 
wooded dell, — is comparatively new, for it 
has arisen since the time of the Puritan civil 
war. The old village was swept away by the 
Roundheads, when Essex and Hampden came 
down, to fight King Charles the First, at Edge- 
hill, in 1642. That fierce strife raged all along 
the country-side, and you can still perceive 
there, in the inequalities of the land, the sites 
on which houses formerly stood. It is a peace- 
ful place now, smiling with flowers and musical 
with the rustle of the leaves of giant elms. 
The clergyman farms his own glebe, and he 
has expended more than a thousand pounds 
in the renovation of his manse. The church 
"living" is not worth much more than <£100 
a year, and when he leaves the dwelling he 
loses the value of all the improvements that he 
has made. That fact he mentioned, with a 




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RAMBLES IN ARDEN 207 

smile. The place is a little paradise, and as 
I looked across the green and golden fields, 
and saw the herds at rest and the wheat waving 
in sun and shadow, and thought of the simple 
life of the handful of people congregated there, 
the words of Gray came murmuring into my 
mind: 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learned to stray ; 

Along the cool, sequestered vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 

"Unregarded age, in corners thrown." Was 
that fine fine suggested to Shakespeare by the 
spectacle of the almshouses of the Guild, 
which, in his time, stood, as they stand now, 
close to the spot where he lived and died? The 
Guild chapel stands at the corner of Chapel 
Street and Chapel Lane, immediately opposite 
to the place of the poet's last home. South- 
ward from the chapel, and adjoining it, 
extends the long, low, sombre building that 
contains the Free Grammar School, in which, 
there is reason to believe, Shakespeare was 



208 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

educated; at first by Walter Roche, after- 
ward by Simon Hunt, — who doubtless birched 
the little boys then, even as the Head- 
Master does now, it being a cardinal principle 
with the British educator that learning, like 
other goods, should be delivered in the rear. 
In those almshouses, doubtless, there were 
many forlorn inmates, even as there are at 
present, and Shakespeare must often have 
seen them. On visiting one of the bedesmen 
I found him moving slowly, with that mild, 
aimless, inert manner and that bleak aspect 
peculiar to such remnants of vanishing life, 
among the vegetable vines and the profuse, 
rambling flowers in the sunny garden behind 
the house; and presently I went with him into 
his humble room and sat by his fireside. The 
scene was a perfect fulfilment of Shakespeare's 
line: A stone floor; a low ceiling crossed with 
dusky beams; walls that had been whitewashed 
long ago; a small iron kettle, with water in it, 
simmering over a few smouldering coals; a 
rough bed, in a corner; a little table, on which 
were three conch-shells, ranged in a row; an 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 209 

old arm-chair, on which were a few coarse 
wads of horsehair, as a cushion; and a bench, 
whereon lay a torn, tattered, soiled copy of 
the Prayer Book of the Church of England, 
open at the Epiphany. The room was lighted 
by a little lattice of small, leaded panes, and 
upon one of the walls hung a framed 
placard of worsted work, bearing the inscrip- 
tion, "Blessed be the Lord for His Unspeak- 
able Gift." The aged, infirm pensioner 
doddered about, and when he was asked what 
had become of his wife his dull eyes filled 
with tears and he said simply that she was 
dead. "So runs the world away." The sum- 
mons surely is not unwelcome that calls such 
an old and lonely pilgrim as that to his rest. 

Warwickshire is hallowed by shining names 
of persons distinguished in letters and art. 
Dugdale, the antiquarian, Fulke Greville, 
"the friend of Sir Philip Sidney," and Dray- 
ton, the poet, were born there. Walter 
Savage Landor was a native of Warwick, — in 
which quaint town you can see the house 
of his birth, duly marked. Croft, the com- 



210 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

poser, was born near Ettington, not far 
from Stratford: there is a tiny monument, 
commemorative of him, in the ruins of Etting- 
ton church, near the manor-house of Shirley: 
and in our day Warwickshire has enriched 
the world with "George Eliot" and with the 
great actress, — the one Ophelia and the one 
Beatrice of our age, — Ellen Terry. It is, how- 
ever, a characteristic of England that which- 
ever way you turn in it your footsteps fall 
on haunted ground. Everyday life, in that 
realm, is continually impressed by incidents 
of historic association. In an old church at 
Greenwich, for example, I asked that I might 
be directed to the tomb of General Wolfe. 
"He is buried just beneath where you are 
now standing," the custodian said. It was 
an elderly woman who showed the place, and 
she presently stated that when a girl she 
once entered the vault beneath that church 
and stood beside the coffin of General Wolfe 
and took a piece of laurel from it, and also 
took a piece of a red velvet pall from the 
coffin of the old Duchess of Bolton, close by. 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 211 

That Duchess was Lavinia Fenton, the first 
representative of Polly Peachum, in "The 
Beggar's Opera," who died in 1760, aged 
fifty- two. "Lord Clive," the dame added, "is 
buried in the same vault with Wolfe." An 
impressive thought, that the ashes of the man 
who established Britain's power in America 
should at last mingle with the ashes of the 
man who gave India to England! 

Among many charming rambles that can be 
enjoyed in the vicinity of Stratford, the ramble 
to Wootton-Wawen and Henley-in-Arden is 
not the least delightful. Those towns are on 
the Birmingham road, the former six miles, 
the latter eight miles, from Stratford. When 
you stand on the bridge at Wootton you are 
only one hundred miles from London, but 
you might be a thousand miles from any city, 
for in all the slumberous scene around you 
there is no hint of anything but solitude and 
peace. Close by a cataract sparkles over the 
rocks and fills the air with music. Not far 
distant rises the stately mass of Wootton Hall, 
an old manor-house, surrounded with green 



212 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

lawns and bowered by majestic elms, which has 
always been a Roman Catholic abode, and 
which is not leased to any but Roman Catholic 
tenants. A cosey, gabled house, standing 
among trees and shrubs a little way from the 
roadside, is the residence of the priest of this 
hamlet. Across the meadows, in one direction, 
peers forth a fine specimen of the timbered 
cottage of ancient times, — the dark beams con- 
spicuous upon a white surface of plaster. 
Among the trees, in another direction, appears 
the great gray tower of Wootton-Wawen 
church, a venerable pile, and one in which, by 
means of the varying orders of its architec- 
ture, you can, perhaps, trace the whole 
ecclesiastical history of England. The 
approach to that church is through a green 
lane and a wicket-gate, and when you come 
near to it you find that it is surrounded with 
many graves, some marked and some 
unmarked, on all of which the long grass 
waves in rank luxuriance and whispers softly 
in the summer breeze. The place seems 
deserted. Not a human creature is visible, 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 213 

and the only sound that breaks the stillness is 
the cawing of rooks in the lofty tops of the 
neighboring elms. The actual life of all 
places, when you come to know it well, proves 
to be, for the most part, conventional, com- 
monplace, and petty. Human beings, with 
here and there an exception, are dull, each, 
in that respect, resembling the other, and each 
needlessly laborious to increase the resemblance. 
In this regard all parts of the world are 
alike, and therefore the happiest traveller is 
he who keeps mostly alone, and uses his eyes, 
and communes with his thoughts. The actual 
life of Wootton is, doubtless, much like that 
of other hamlets, a bickering tenor of church 
squabbles, village gossip, and discontented 
grumbling, diversified with feeding, drinking, 
cricket, golf, lawn tennis, matrimony, birth, 
and death. But as I looked around upon the 
group of nestling cottages, the broad meadows, 
green and cool in the shadow of densely 
mantled trees, and the ancient church, gray 
and faded with antiquity, slowly crumbling 
amid the everlasting vitality of Nature, I felt 



214 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

that here, perhaps, might be discovered a 
permanent haven of refuge from the incessant 
platitude and triviality of ordinary experience 
and the empty strife and din of the world. 

Wootton-Wawen church is one of the 
numerous Roman Catholic buildings of about 
the eleventh century that still survive in Eng- 
land, devoted now to Protestant worship. It 
has been partly restored, but most of it is 
in a state of decay. A more valuable 
ecclesiastical relic it would be difficult to find, 
even in that region rich with antique treasures, 
the heart of England. Its sequestered situa- 
tion and its sweetly rural surroundings invest 
it with peculiar beauty. It is associated, fur- 
thermore, with names that are stately in Eng- 
lish history and honored in English literature, 
— with Henry St. John, Viscount Boling- 
broke, whose sister reposes in its ancient 
vaults, and with William Somerville, 1692- 
1742, the poet who wrote "The Chase." It 
was not until I actually stood upon his tomb- 
stone that my attention was directed to the 
name of that old author, and to the presence 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 215 

of his relics in that lonely place. Somerville, 
who lived and died at Edston Hall, near 
Wootton-Wawen, was noted in his day as 
a Warwickshire squire and huntsman. His 
grave is in the chancel of the church, the fol- 
lowing felicitous epitaph, written by himself, 
being inscribed upon the plain blue stone that 
covers it: — 

H. s. E. 

OBIIT 17. JULY. 1742. 

GULIEEMUS SOMERVILE. AEM. 

SI QUID IN ME BONI COMPERTUM 

HABEAS, 

IMITATE. 
SI QUID MALI, TOTIS VIRIBUS 
EVITA. 

CHBISTO CONFIDE, 
ET SCIAS TE QUOQUE FRAGILEM 
ESSE 

ET MORTALEM. 

Such words have a meaning that sinks deep 
into the heart when they are read upon the 
gravestone that covers the poet's dust. Another 
epitaph written by Somerville, — one that shows 
equally the kindness of his heart and the quaint- 



216 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

ness of his character, — appears upon a little, 
low, lichen-covered stone in Wootton-Wawen 
churchyard, commemorating his huntsman and 
butler, Jacob Bocter, who was hurt in the hunt- 
ing-field, and died of that accident: — 

H. s. E. 

JACOBUS BOCTER. 

GULIELMO SOMERVILE ARMIGRO 

PROMUS ET CANIBUS VENATICIS 

PRAEPOSITOR 

DOMI. FORISQUE FIDELIS 

EQUO INTER VENANDUM CORUENTE 

ET INTESTINIS GRAVITER COLLISIS 

POST TRIDUUM DEPLORANDUS. 

OBDT 

28 DIE JAN., 

ANNO DNI 1719. 

AETAT 38. 

The pilgrim who rambles as far as Woot- 
ton-Wawen will surely stroll onward to 
Henley-in-Arden. The whole of that region 
was originally covered by the Forest of 
Arden — the woods that Shakespeare had in 
mind when he was writing "As You Like It,'* 
a comedy whereof the atmosphere, foliage, 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 217 

flowers, scenery, and spirit are purely those 
of its author's native Warwickshire. Henley, 
if the observer can judge by the numerous 
inns that fringe its long, straggling, picturesque 
street, must once have been a favorite halting- 
place for the coaches that plied between Lon- 
don and Birmingham. Those inns are mostly 
disused now, and the little town sleeps in the 
sun and seems forgotten. Mention has already 
been made of the ancient Market-Cross in its 
centre, — gray, sombre, and much frayed by 
the tooth of time. Near Henley, and accessible 
in a walk of a few minutes, is the church of 
Beaudesert, one of the most precious of the 
ecclesiastic gems of England. There you can 
see architecture of mingled Saxon and Nor- 
man, — the solid Norman buttress, the castel- 
lated tower, the Saxon arch moulded in zig- 
zag, which is more ancient than the dog-tooth, 
and the round, compact columns of the early 
English order. Near the church rises a noble 
mound, upon which, in the Middle Ages, stood 
a castle, — probably that of Peter de Montfort, 
— and from which a comprehensive, superb 



218 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

view can be obtained, over many miles of 
verdant meadow and bosky dell, interspersed 
with red-roofed villages, from which the smoke 
of the cottage chimneys curls up in thin blue 
spirals under the gray and golden sky. A 
graveyard encircles the church, and by its 
orderly disorder, — the quaint, graceful work 
of capricious time, — enhances the charm of its 
venerable age. The membership of the parish 
of Beaudesert is very small; it consisted of 
only 146 persons at the time of my visit. I 
was privileged to speak with the aged rector, 
the Rev. John Anthony Pearson Linskill, and 
to view the church under his kindly guidance. 
That venerable man died, February, 1890, in 
the picturesque rectory of Beaudesert (birth- 
place of Richard Jago, 1715-1781, the poet who 
wrote "EdgehiH"), and he is buried within the 
shadow of the church that he loved. His good- 
ness, his benevolent mind, and the charm of his 
artless talk will not be forgotten. My walk, on 
leaving Beaudesert, took me miles away, — to 
Claverdon, and back to Stratford by way of 
Bearley, and all the time it was my thought 



RAMBLES IN ARDEN 219 

that some of the best moments of our lives 
are those in which we are chastened by 
parting and by regret. Nothing is said as 
often as good-by: but, in the touching words 
of Cowper: 

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. 



XIII. 
ON THE AVON. 

The river life of Stratford is one of the 
chief delights of that delightful town. The 
Avon, according to law, is navigable from its 
mouth, at Tewkesbury, where it empties into 
the Severn, as far upward as Warwick, but 
according to fact it is passable only by the 
resolute navigator who can and will surmount 
obstacles. From Tewkesbury up to Evesham 
there is plain sailing. Above Evesham there 
are occasional barriers. At Stratford there is 
an abrupt pause, at Lucy's Mill, and your 
boat must be taken ashore, dragged over the 
meadows, and launched again above the dam. 
Lucy's Mill is south of the Shakespeare Church, 
and from that point up to Clopton's bridge 
the river is broad. There boat-races are rowed, 
almost every year. There the stream ripples 

220 



ON THE AVON 221 

against the pleasure-ground called the Ban- 
croft, skirts the gardens of the Shakespeare 
Memorial, glides past the lovely lawns of 
Avonbank, and breaks upon the retaining wall 
of the churchyard, crowned with the high, 
thick-leaved elms that nod and whisper over 
Shakespeare's dust. The town lies mostly on 
the west bank of the Avon. On the east 
bank there is a wide stretch of meadow. To 
float along there, in the gloaming, when the 
bats are winging their "cloistered flight," when 
great flocks of starlings are flying rapidly 
over, when "the crow makes wing to the rooky 
wood," when the water is as smooth as a 
mirror of burnished steel, and equally the 
grasses and flowers upon the banks and the 
stately trees and the gray, solemn, beautiful 
church are reflected in the lucid stream, is an 
experience of thoughtful pleasure that sinks 
deep into the heart and will never be forgotten. 
You do not know all of Stratford till you 
know the Avon. 

From Clopton's bridge the river winds 
capriciously, and its banks are sometimes 



222 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

fringed by willows and sometimes bordered 
by grassy meadows or patches of woodland 
or cultivated lawns, enclosing villas that seem 
the chosen homes of loveliness and peace. 
The course is clear for several miles. Not till 
you pass the foot of Alveston village does any 
obstacle present itself, but there, as well as 
a little further on, by Hatton Rock, the stream 
runs shallow and the current becomes very 
swift, dashing over sandy banks and great 
masses of tangled grass and weeds. These 
are "the rapids," and through these the boatman 
must make his way by adroit steering and a 
vigorous and expert use of oars and boat- 
hooks. The Avon, at this point, is bowered 
by tall trees, and upon the height that it 
skirts you see the house of Ryon Hill, — a 
dwelling that figures in the novel of 
"Asphodel," by Miss Braddon. That part of 
the river, closed in and presenting in each 
direction twinkling vistas of sun and shadow, 
is especially lovely. There, in a quiet hour, 
the creatures that live along the shores will 
freely show themselves and their busy ways. 



ON THE AVON 223 

The water-rat comes out of his hole and 
nibbles at the reeds or swims sturdily across 
the stream. The moor-hen flutters out of her 
nest, among the long, green rushes, and skims 
from bank to bank. The nimble little wag- 
tail flashes through the foliage. The squirrel 
leaps among the boughs, and the rabbit 
scampers into the thicket. Sometimes a king- 
fisher, with his shining azure shield, pauses for 
a moment among the gnarled roots upon the 
brink. Sometimes a heron, disturbed in her 
nest, rises suddenly upon her great wings and 
soars grandly away. Once, rowing down the 
Avon at nearly midnight, I surprised an otter 
and heard the splash of his precipitate retreat. 
The ghost of an old gypsy, who died by suicide 
upon this wooded shore, is said to haunt the 
neighboring crag, but this, like all other ghosts 
that ever I came near, eluded equally my 
vision and my desire. But the spot is weird 
at night. 

Near Alveston Mill you must drag your 
boat over a narrow strip of land and launch 
it again for Charlecote. Now once more 



224 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the water-way is broad and fine. As it flows 
past a stately, secluded home, once that of 
the ancient family of Peers, toward the Welles- 
bourne Road, a large bed of cultivated white 
water-lilies (hitherto they have all been yel- 
low) adorns it, and soon there are glimpses 
of the deer that browse or prance or slumber 
beneath the magnificent oaks, elms, limes, and 
chestnuts of Charlecote Park. No view of 
Charlecote Manor can compare with the view 
of it that is obtained from the river. The 
older wing, with its oriel window and quaint 
belfry, is of a peculiar, mellow red, relieved 
against bright green ivy. The only piece of 
architecture in this region that excels it in 
beauty of color is the ancient house of Comp- 
ton-Wynyates, but that is a marvel of loveli- 
ness, the gem of Warwickshire, and, in 
romantic quaintness, it surpasses all its fellows. 
The towers of the main building of Charle- 
cote are octagon, and a happy alternation of 
thin and slender with thick, truncated turrets 
much enhances the effect of quaintness in that 
opulent edifice. A walled terrace, margined 



ON THE AVON 225 

with urns and blazing with flowers of gold 
and crimson, extends from the river front of 
the home to the waterside, and terminates in 
a broad flight of stone steps, at the foot of 
which are moored the barges of the family of 
Lucy. No spectacle could suggest more of 
aristocratic state and austere magnificence than 
this sequestered edifice does, standing there, 
silent, antique, venerable, surrounded by its 
vast, thick-wooded park, and musing, as it has 
done for centuries, on the silver Avon that 
murmurs at its base. Close by there is a 
lovely waterfall, over which a little tributary 
of the river descends in a fivefold wave of 
shimmering crystal, wafting a music that is 
heard in every chamber of the house and in 
all the fields and woodlands round about. 
It needs the sun to bring out the rich colors 
of Charlecote, but once when I saw it from 
the river a storm was coming on, and vast 
masses of black and smoke-colored cloud were 
driving over it, in shapeless blocks and jagged 
streamers, while countless frightened birds 
were whirling above it; and when the fierce 



226 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

lightning flashed across the heavens and a 
deluge of rain descended and beat upon it, 
the spectacle became one of surpassing mag- 
nificence — a tempestuous splendor that words 
cannot depict. 

Above Charlecote the Avon grows narrow, 
for a space, and after you pass under Hampton 
Lucy bridge your boat is entangled in river 
grass and impeded by whirls and eddies of the 
shallowing stream. There is another mill at 
Hampton Lucy, and a little way beyond the 
village your further progress upward is 
stopped by a waterfall, — beyond which, how- 
ever, and accessible by the usual expedient of 
dragging the boat over the land, a noble reach 
of the river is disclosed, stretching away toward 
Warwick, where the wonderful Castle, and 
tall St. Mary's tower, and Leicester's hos- 
pital, and the cosey Warwick Arms await your 
coming, — with mouldering Kenilworth and 
majestic Stoneleigh Abbey reserved, to lure 
you still further afield. But the scene around 
Hampton Lucy is not one to be quickly left. 
There the meadows are rich, green, and 



ON THE AVON 227 

fragrant. There the large trees give grateful 
shade and make sweet music in the summer 
wind. There, from the ruddy village, thin 
spires of blue smoke curl upward through the 
leaves and seem to tell of comfort and content 
beneath. At a little distance the gray tower 
of the noble church, — an edifice of peculiar 
majesty, and one well worthy of the excep- 
tional beauty enshrined within it, — rears itself 
among the elms. Close by the sleek and 
indolent cattle are couched upon the cool sod, 
looking at you with large, soft, lustrous, indif- 
ferent eyes. The waterfall murmurs its low, 
melancholy plaint, while sometimes the silver 
foam of it is caught up and whirled away by 
the breeze. The waves sparkle on the running 
stream, and the wildflowers, in gay myriads, 
glimmer on the velvet shore: and so, as the 
sun is setting, you breathe the fragrant air 
from Scarbank, and turn homeward, soothed 
in a dream of beauty and grateful for a happy 
day. 



XIV. 

HEREFORD AND TINTERN ABBEY. 

Twilight in an old English city. Rain 
has fallen many times, during the day, and as 
the gloaming deepens the sky is gloomy with 
drifting clouds. The music of the chimes in 
a neighboring church tower has just died away, 
and in the hush that follows it I hear the 
twittering of birds and the rustle of leaves 
and branches in a strong, cool, fragrant wind. 
At most times the sense that oppresses a 
thoughtful mind is that of the overwhelming 
surge and stress of human life: in this serene 
hour the dominant consciousness is that of 
opulent, diversified, all-encircling peace and 
beauty. Not long ago, — a pilgrim, revisiting 
hallowed shrines, — I landed on the south shore 
of England, and, until this moment, drifting 
from place to place, I have known much action 

228 



HEREFORD 229 

and wearing excitement. To-night there is a 
pause, and the old feeling of sweet composure 
comes back upon my spirit, and I feel again 
that this is indeed the old home, the land of 
my youthful longings, the land that has been 
the fulfilment of my early dreams. 

A beautiful environment naturally tends to 
composure, but it must cease to be novel 
before it will begin to soothe. As I review the 
interval since that lovely summer morning 
when the golden rocks of the Scilly Islands 
glimmered into view, with white seas dashing 
over them and sparkling in the sun, I remember 
a mass of things which only now have crystal- 
lized into lovely memories. There is a grand 
strain of organ music, and the gray spaces of 
St. Paul's Cathedral seem peopled with angel 
forms that float upward in the vast dome and 
vanish into heaven. Sunlight streams on the 
sacred memorials in the Poets' Corner of the 
great Abbey, and all the glories of English 
literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson, throng 
into the mind and overwhelm it with gratitude 
and wonder. It is night on the dark, silent 



230 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Thames, and under the cold light of stars rise 
the grim bastions of the haunted Tower. Mid- 
night is brooding over the plains, hedgerows, 
and copses of beautiful Warwickshire, and as 
I sit on the old stone bench, by the riverside, 
in Stratford churchyard, a chill wind stirs the 
leaves and, beneath a gibbous moon, the great 
elms that encircle the ancient church are 
reflected in the wavering waters of the Avon, 
far below, and all the world is turned to reverie 
and dream. It is a glorious morning, and 
beneath a sky of blue and gold, and snowy, 
drifting fleece, I watch the gray spire of Strat- 
ford church till it fades in the distance, while 
around me are green and yellow fields that 
seem to bask in sunshine and are peaceful with 
recumbent sheep, drowsy cattle, and indolent 
rooks. A little later the crag of Meon vanishes, 
the ancient town of Evesham, with its noble 
tower, its breezy vanes, and its broad reaches 
of sparkling river, recedes, and I am speeding 
through the gardens and apple orchards of 
Evesham vale and Pershore, while, melting 
from my vision, like rifted clouds of fairyland, 



HEREFORD 231 

the lovely Cotswold Hills dwindle into silver 
haze. The blaze of noon is brilliant on the red 
roofs of Worcester, and the great, gray 
Cathedral, with its massive, ornate tower and 
cone-shaped pinnacles, comes upon the soul like 
a benediction, saying that beauty is immortal 
and that grandeur has not left the world. Soon 
the lonely hills of Malvern glide into view, 
and I see that charming, breezy city, where 
it sleeps on the hillside, — its sober villas draped 
with green, pink, and scarlet of geranium, 
white petunia, clinging clusters of purple 
clematis, roses that yet linger and great veils 
of glistening ivy that tremble in the perfumed 
wind. Storm and sunshine are glorious in giant 
strife on the windy summit of the Worcester 
Beacon and on the old Saxon camp that frowns 
over the beautiful vale of the Severn, but the 
wonderful prospect, perhaps the most wonder- 
ful in all England, is spread before me at 
intervals, while, — looking down upon distant 
Gloucester, and Cheltenham, and Tewkesbury, 
and over Windcomb and Sudeley, where lie 
the kings of old Mercia, and across the Welsh 



232 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

hills toward ancient Hereford, \\ith all the 
beauties round me of what once was Malvern 
Chase, — I muse on the Wars of the Roses, and 
see, as in a vision, the whole splendid pageant 
of the history of England. 

The scene changes, and every change is 
fraught with meaning. The green slopes of 
distant Bredon Hill are left, and through the 
great tunnel beneath the mountains of Malvern 
I enter the sunny fields and smiling valleys of 
Wales. It is a peaceful afternoon at Here- 
ford, and in the Lady Chapel of its venerable 
Cathedral I sit for a long time and gaze upon 
the lovely lancet windows, while to a small 
group of worshippers a kindly clergyman 
expounds an epistle of Paul, and his benign, 
simple manner makes the solemnity of the 
solemn place still more impressive. My 
thoughts, however, are more with sinners than 
with saints, in Hereford, for it is a memory 
of Nell Gwynn and David Garrick, and not 
entirely the Cathedral, that has lured me to 
that place, and soon I am standing in Wilde- 
marsh Street, and looking on the Raven Inn 



HEREFORD 233 

where Gar rick was born, — the greatest come- 
dian, perhaps, that ever illumined the English 
stage. The Raven Inn is a little brick building, 
on a corner, in a busy neighborhood, and not 
in any way distinctive. No doubt it has under- 
gone changes, but it was a tavern when Gar- 
rick's parents dwelt in it, and a tavern it 
remains. Over the door of its "smoke room" 
a circular blue tablet, inscribed with white 
letters, declares it to be the actor's birthplace, 
and gives the date of his birth, 1716. His 
father was a military officer, at that time, 
stationed in Hereford, and in the parish 
register of All Saints' Church, which is not far 
from the Raven Inn, the record of the auspi- 
cious boy's baptism is still preserved and shown. 
Next to the Raven Inn there is a barber's shop, 
and opposite to it a market, while not distant 
are municipal offices, a school for girls, and 
Association rooms for youthful male Chris- 
tians. Garrick's youth was passed, not in 
Hereford, but in Lichfield, where he went to 
school to Doctor Johnson, and therefore Here- 
ford's associations with him, though important, 



234 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

are not extensive; but the old city is proud of 
her illustrious son, and well she may be, for 
the birth of David Gar rick within her walls 
shines brighter in her annals than the deaths of 
old warriors or any deeds of ancient kings: 
and King Harold once had a royal castle there, 
and King Stephen sat crowned in the Cathedral, 
and Queen Isabella hanged Hugh de Spencer 
at one of the gates, and Owen Tudor was 
beheaded there, over four hundred years ago, 
and was buried in a monastery on the banks 
of the Wye. They show you, in the Cathedral, 
the chair on which King Stephen sat, but I 
was conscious of a livelier emotion when gaz- 
ing on the humble cradle of the great actor 
whose genius and influence, in a pedantic 
period, lifted the English stage to dignity and 
shed around it a halo of lasting renown. It 
was a singular, almost an ironical, freak of 
Nature, operating by the accident of birth, 
that twined with Garrick's name the far less 
important though interesting name of Nell 
Gwynn. The house of her birth has been 
demolished, but, strolling southward toward the 




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^ajc*,^ 



HEREFORD 235 

river, after evening service in the Cathedral, 
I presently found myself in Gwynn Street, a 
sombre little lane, named after the royal 
favorite, and I saw the mural record of the 
actress who ruled the King, in those merry, 
dissolute Stuart times, more than three hundred 
years ago. 

Day is waning over the links and fanes of 
the Wye as I leave it, at Ross, and speed 
away, by Grange Court, toward the Severn 
and the sea. It is sunset at Newham, and 
soon the noble river broadens, and the wide 
tracts of sand that fringe its banks, show 
themselves, bleak and desolate, beneath the 
gathering night. My haven is Chepstow, and 
in the stillness and comfort of the Beaufort 
Arms I pass a little time of slumber and a 
longer time of thought, while the lonely 
moments pass, and, hour by hour, the church- 
bell softly tolls their requiem. Glad morning is 
at the Severn mouth and over the green hills 
and hard white roads of wind-swept, fragrant, 
glistening Monmouthshire, and I am standing 
at the Pulpit Rock, on the wooded summit of 



236 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the Wyndcliffe, and one of the richest prospects 
that opulent England can furnish is spread 
before me, in a blaze of green and gold. All 
around and stretching miles away are thickly 
wooded hills. In front lies the peaceful, sunlit 
valley of the Wye, the little river curving 
here, and making a perfect fan, on which 
stand a manor and a church, and every 
foot of which is cultivated, so that it blooms 
with verdure and plenty, to the water's 
edge. Beyond that fan of many-colored earth, 
and on the furthest shore of the stream, rise 
the shattered towers of Chepstow Castle, 
esteemed among the most picturesque of ruins, 
and a living witness to the many and strange 
vicissitudes of its fortune during seven cen- 
turies of teeming life. Around it are clustered 
the pleasant habitations of the pleasant town. 
More distant gleams the broad Severn, which 
here receives the tributary waters of the Wye, 
while far away eastward shines the wide 
expanse of the Bristol Channel, through which 
continually ebbs and flows one of the mightiest 
of Atlantic tides. The day is uncommonly 



HEREFORD 237 

clear, and this gorgeous pageant, resplendent 
under a dome of sapphire, is only darkened now 
and then by the fleeting shadow of a cloud, 
swiftly driven by the summer gale. On one 
side I look toward Berkeley, darkly famous 
for the savage slaughter of a King, and on the 
other side toward Clevedon, hallowed by the 
sepulchre of a poet. In yonder Castle the hand 
of murder stilled the heart of King Edward 
the Second; in yonder church, upon the lonely 
hill, was laid the dust of Arthur Hallam. 
Touching in itself, this memorable scene is 
also touching for what it encloses and reveals, 
and I part from it as from something always 
to be loved and never to be forgotten. 

The path downward is through dense, bird- 
haunted thickets on the mountain slopes, and 
through a quaint, cavernous, grotto-like moss- 
cottage at the roadside, and soon, as I drive 
along the valley of the Wye, a flood of sun- 
shine streams upon the gray and ruddy stones 
of Tintern, and I behold the loveliest monastic 
ruin in this historic land. The ruin of Foun- 
tain's Abbey, at venerable Ripon, is more 



238 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

impressive by the attribute of grandeur, more 
stimulative to the imagination, and, in its 
desolate loneliness, more touching to the heart, 
but Tintern possesses an inexpressible charm 
of tender grace and poetic beauty. Only the 
walls remain, of cruciform nave and transept, 
with cloister, chapter-house, refectory, and a few 
adjacent rooms, but those remnants, almost 
uniform in architectural style, present a sym- 
metry of proportion, an elegance of simplicity, 
an opulence of detail, and a lovely lightness of 
effect, for which it would be well-nigh impos- 
sible to find a parallel. The Abbey must have 
been the perfection of the stately perpendicular 
order. The tracery of its windows is of 
fascinating delicacy, — the south window, in 
particular, being of such just proportion and 
such winning character that the eye lingers 
upon it as if enchanted. As you sit beneath 
that superb casement, while huge broken masses 
of white cloud drift swiftly over and the bril- 
liant grass and the white daisies ripple at your 
feet, you will try to shape, in fancy, some image 
of the beautiful Abbey, as it appeared to the 



HEREFORD 239 

Cistercian monks who built it, six hundred 
years ago. The natural environment is, prac- 
tically, unchanged. The placid river still purls 
round the promontory on which it is built. 
The wooded hills encompass and shelter it on 
either hand. Except for a tiny street of 
dwellings that straggles along the riverside, 
modern craft afloat in the stream, cleared lands 
adjacent, and perhaps an occasional sound of 
travel, you might think yourself in the Plan- 
tagenet days. This is a place given wholly to 
careless indolence, graceful disorder, cleanliness, 
stillness, repose, and peace. Even the stones 
of the ruin seem asleep. Great shrouds of ivy 
have covered some of the walls, and when the 
breeze softly flutters them you think of a slum- 
bering dreamer stirring in his dream. By a 
spiral stone staircase in the north transept it 
is possible to reach a considerable height, — 
indeed, to reach the summit of the nave, across 
which there is a dizzy passage, and the explorer 
will be well rewarded by the view which he 
can obtain from that eminence. Such forms, 
such tracery, such carving, — they are the work, 



240 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

not of skill only, but of love; and, looking on 
that wonder of ruined beauty, j^ou feel once 
more the great, vital truth that everything 
which is precious in art, in literature, and in 
life, is born of self-sacrifice and reared in 
spiritual devotion. It is bright daylight when 
I look my last on Tintern Abbey and murmur 
Farewell. Many a year had I longed to see it. 
Many a dream of it had I cherished — thinking 
of Wordsworth's eloquent poem, which the 
sight of it inspired. The reality is more than 
any dream. In one heart it will dwell forever 
with the sunlight sleeping on its ivied walls, 
the white daisies gleaming on its carpet of 
velvet sod, the fragrant wind sighing through 
its empty casements, the rooks flying over it, 
and the benediction of heaven garnered in its 
bosom. 




.>- ^ — -* . 






XV. 

TENNYSON. 

When I stood at the summit of the Wynd- 
cliffe and looked toward Clevedon I thought 
of Hallam and Tennyson, — that they "were 
lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their 
deaths they were not divided." Arthur Henry 
Hallam (1811-1833) died suddenly, at Vienna, 
when only on the threshold of a life which, con- 
sidering the genius he had already evinced and 
the mental powers attributed to him by friends 
not less judicious than affectionate, might well 
have proved as rich in achievement as it was 
brilliant in promise. His remains were con- 
veyed to England, and, in January, 1834, were 
buried in the chancel of Clevedon church. That 
church, which stands on a lonely hill, over- 
looking the Bristol Channel, was imaged in 
Tennyson's memory when he wrote that 

241 



242 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

exquisite lyric, — the perfect poetry of tears, — 
which closes with those words of infinite sad- 
ness and longing and immortal significance: 

Break, break, break 

At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me. 

And the thought of that grave beneath the 
pavement of Clevedon church permeates with 
the spirit of a grief not less sublime than 
loving every strain of "In Memoriam," — the 
most pathetic and beautiful commemorative 
poem in the English language. 

Tennyson, dying in 1892, had survived his 
friend and comrade for close on sixty years, 
never ceasing to cherish his memory, never 
doubting that they would meet again. Looking 
upon Clevedon church I remembered the start- 
ling though expected message which one day 
reached me, far across the sea — "Tennyson is 
dead": and I recalled the thoughts which then 
thronged upon my mind, thoughts which, how- 
ever inadequate to a great theme, were those 



TENNYSON 243 

of heart-felt homage. He was the greatest of 
all the poets since Byron. He died in his 
eighty-fourth year, a noble mission completed, 
a beautiful life accomplished. That mission 
was to develop in himself a great soul and a 
stately character, and, by means of their perfect 
expression, in the highest, most enduring form 
of art, to aid humanity in the achievement of 
spiritual progress. Many poets have died in 
youth or middle age: Tennyson enjoyed, to the 
full, whatever advantage accrues to a long life, 
and he attained to a complete development of 
his powers and a complete fulfilment of his 
artistic designs. He did not leave unexplored 
any region of thought which he wished to 
explore, and he did not leave unsaid any 
important word that it was in his power to say. 
He was deeply loved; he will ever be tenderly 
remembered; and, long after his generation has 
passed away, his name will be found written 
on the scroll of fame. His release, old as 
he was, and burdened with the weight of 
years, must have come to him as a blessing: 
"Call me not so often back, silent voices of 



244 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the dead!" The supreme feeling of all who 
know his poetry and his story will always be 
that of grateful pride in the purity of his life, 
the majesty of his character, the splendid afflu- 
ence of his genius, and the imperishable lustre 
of his renown. 

The word of a poet is precious precisely 
in as far as it expresses, not his heart alone, 
but the heart that is universal, — the passion, 
the emotion, the essential life of humanity, 
at its best. A word that is said for the hour 
disappears with the hour for which it is said, 
but when the great representative poet has 
spoken, speaking from the soul of Nature, his 
message becomes an essential part of human 
experience and dwells in memory forever. 
Tennyson is the poet of love, sorrow, passion, 
affection, pageantry, pathos, sublimity, and 
faith, and especially he is the poet of destiny 
and will. The range of his vision is very broad. 
His glance is penetrating and deep. His voice 
is not the echo of the age in which he lived, 
however much he may have been disturbed by 
the conflicts of that age, but it is a voice pro- 



TENNYSON 245 

ceeding out of the elemental source of things, 
and uttering absolute truths, in words that are 
beautiful, final, and perfect. The reader of 
Tennyson finds that his own spirit, — his essen- 
tial experience, discontent, aspiration, the 
inmost fibre of his being, — is expressed for him 
with a fulness, a passionate sincerity, and an 
artistic beauty that he could never hope to 
reach, and that expression satisfies him fully, 
and leads, and guides, and strengthens him. 
The human mind, glad and thankful in the 
presence of much good, but not blind to the 
existence of much evil, has not succeeded in 
proving that everything will finish well, nor 
has it succeeded in illuminating the way in 
which that consummation can be obtained; yet 
it believes in the ultimate triumph of good. 
That conviction is adamantine in the poetry of 
Tennyson. A distinctive, possibly a predomi- 
nant note in it, is the pathetic note: "I shall 
never see thee more, in the long gray fields, at 
night." The evanescence of man and all his 
works is continuously recognized, and even 
when the blare of the trumpet is at its loudest 



246 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the low sob of the organ is heard, a solemn 
undertone of lament and warning. Yet Tenny- 
son is a poet who rests calmly on the strength 
of the human will and looks without fear into 
the eyes of death. Such a poet is a leader and 
comforter of the human race, and it is natural 
and right that he should have its homage. 

The thoroughness and far-sighted patience 
with which Tennyson developed his mind and 
ascertained and exercised his poetic faculties 
provide a lesson of supreme value in the con- 
duct of intellectual life. No one of the poets 
has manifested more, few have manifested 
as much, of the grand stability that consists in 
sane continence and poise. Tennyson's genius 
was not delirious. His works give no sign 
of that feverish straining after effect, that 
strenuous reaching upward for an object or 
an idea, that flurry of wild endeavor, which 
are characteristic of a petty mind. He was 
born great, but he so nurtured, trained, and 
disciplined his powers that he steadily increased 
in greatness. He made his intellect broad and 
he kept it holy, in order that the revelations 



TENNYSON 247 

of Nature and of the spiritual world might 
flow through it as through their natural chan- 
nel. He was not warped from his course 
by the influence of other men, or by con- 
sideration of popular applause or of the idle 
fancies and fleeting caprice of mankind. He 
was never that sentimental, effusive demagogue, 
the Poet of the People; he was something 
far higher and better than that, — he was the 
Poet of Man. Like Wordsworth, — his illus- 
trious predecessor, with whom, in the attribute 
of stately individuality and the circumstance 
of temperamental isolation, he was kindred, — 
he took and kept his chosen, natural path. 
There was once a time when Tennyson 
received little but ridicule and neglect, and 
then, later, came a time when he received an 
homage amounting almost to idolatry, but 
during neither of those periods was his spiritual 
serenity disturbed. The ideal of lofty, inflex- 
ible character and pure, perfect manliness that 
his poetry continually presents was the uncon- 
scious reflex of himself. His magnificent Ode 
on "The Death of the Duke of Wellington," 



248 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

thrills and trembles with profound, passionate 
exultation in the reality of virtuous strength 
and moral grandeur. 

The transcendent attributes of power that 
Tennyson's poems disclose are heart and 
imagination. Their vitality of feeling, never 
shown in discord or tumult, but always present, 
like the central heat of the sun, is colossal, 
and, looking back on the current of his years 
and the incessant fertility of his achievement, 
it is not less than marvellous that such intense 
emotion should have kept itself alive in him 
for so long a time. Almost to the end his 
voice was a clarion and his pen was fire. In 
his poem of "Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After" there is the same strain of noble, 
impassioned feeling, — loftier, grander, more 
predominant and more august, if possible, — 
that burns in the "Locksley Hall" of his vigor- 
ous, splendid youth. He did not need to go 
out of himself for inspiration. The flame 
leaped from within. The altar was never 
darkened and never cold. Every influence that 
the experience and environment of his life 



TENNYSON 249 

could liberate became tremulous with sensi- 
bility and eloquent with meaning, the moment 
it touched his mind. It was as if the wander- 
ing breeze derived warmth, fragrance, and 
deathless melody from only sweeping the 
strings of the harp that had been placed to 
receive its caress. He was an example, further- 
more, of that miracle of Nature, the renewal 
of the elemental poetic power. At a time 
when it seemed, with the death of Byron, 
that the last great poetic voice was hushed, 
suddenly the genius of Tennyson sprang 
into light, and the world was dowered with a 
literature of poetry essentially and absolutely 
new. 

The poetry of Tennyson, while never 
eccentric, is unique. It has, indeed, been widely 
imitated, — as he observed when he wrote that 
"Most can raise the flower now, for all have 
got the seed"; but the hand of the Master 
remains unrivalled. The blank verse of Ten- 
nyson possesses a rich quality of music and an 
indescribable potency of movement that were 
his own. He used many of the old forms of 



250 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

versification, but he beautified every one of 
them that he touched. The stanza of "In 
Memoriam" occurs in Ben Jonson, but Ten- 
nyson gave it a grace, flexibility, and sono- 
rous music all his own. In the invention 
of new forms he was remarkably ingenious, 
but it is notable, as in "The Lotos Eaters," 
"The Two Voices," "Margaret," and other 
of his poems, that the form is the inevitable 
consequence of the thought. Every fibre of 
his art was pervaded by inspiration. He proved 
that the most delicate and beautiful refinement 
of mechanism, in the use of language, is not 
incompatible with boundless feeling. He made 
intolerable and impossible, henceforth, in poetry, 
the bad extremes of tumid verbiage and soulless 
form. Alike to literature and to life the serv- 
ices that he rendered are those of perpetual 
blessing, and the world is nobler, and the life 
of coming generations will be better and more 
beautiful, because he has lived and written. 




ALFRED TENNYSON 

1809-1892 



He Jialh returned to regions whence he came. 

Him doth the spirit divine 
Of universal loveliness reclaim. 

All X at nre is his shrine. 

WILLIAM WATSON. 



XVI. 

STRATFORD TO NOTTINGHAM. 

A white swan was floating on the dark, 
shining stream of the Avon when last I saw it, 
and birds were circling around the gray spire 
of the Shakespeare Church, and under a sky 
of mingled cloud and sunshine the great elms 
that curtain it, reflected in the still water, 
seemed to hallow it as the perfect emblem of 
majesty and peace. For me the picture fades 
and disappears, but for all time the Swan of 
Avon will glorify that place and will allure 
the reverent pilgrim from every part of the 
world. Thus thinking, and with heartfelt bless- 
ing on a scene long known and dearly loved, 
I turned away from the shrine of Shakespeare, 
to revisit the early haunts and the ancestral 
home of Byron. 

The annual number of passenger trips by 

251 



252 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

railway in Great Britain is stated at nine hun- 
dred and eighty millions, from which fact it can 
be inferred that the scenery of that country 
has been generally observed. There is not, 
indeed, anything in the inhabited world that has 
not been viewed by somebody, and there is not 
anything which, to somebody, is not familiar: 
custom will stale almost every spectacle that the 
world can furnish: yet, to an imaginative 
vision, novelty and charm continually present 
themselves, and travel never loses its zest. 
These English scenes, though known to me 
for many years, are still lovely. 

The course is through ploughed fields and 
vacant meadows, over which, here and there, 
plods a lonely sportsman, intent on shooting 
the grouse. The traveller's glance lingers upon 
the red roofs of cosey farm houses, the cattle 
and sheep that are carelessly grouped in the 
pastures, the haws, now glowing red in the 
green bushes of the hawthorn, and the pleasing, 
irregular hedgerows that diversify the distant 
hills. Near at hand many frightened rabbits 
scurry away, and hide themselves among the 



STRATFORD TO NOTTINGHAM 253 

tangled gorse. Wooded tracts appear, and 
white roads that stretch away through green 
fields, diamond-pointed or circular hay-ricks, 
and meadows of russet-tinted grass, spangled 
with millions of golden buttercups, that faintly 
wave in a cool, autumn wind. There is Etting- 
ton, where Shirley dwelt, who figures in 
"Lothair"; there is the old Roman Foss; there 
is beautiful Compton-Wynyates, slumbering in 
its green dell; there is Keinton, nestled among 
the low hills; and presently, under a glorious 
blue sky flecked with shreds of white and leaden 
cloud, I gaze on the crest of famous Edgehill, 
where King Charles the First defeated the 
Roundheads, and mark the beginning of the 
vale of the Red Horse. Through that region 
of Warwickshire the characteristics of the 
scenery are uniform, and, except for minor 
shades of difference, one picture only repeats 
another. It is early autumn now, and the 
various contrasted tints of the grass denote 
the declining year, but though the grasses 
wither and the leaves have begun to fall, the 
cedars are dark with foliage, the oaks, elms, 



254 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

and beeches make a brave show on the hillsides, 
and in the moist lowlands the rich, deep green of 
the meadows is dazzling in its brightness. 

On this day of my pilgrimage the sun was 
often hidden by clouds, but its soft influence, 
diffused through white and tawny fleece, made 
a tranquil shade, well befitting a time of fare- 
well, and hallowing the remembrance of days 
forever gone. Objects seen in such a light as 
that become transfigured, and even the common- 
place is poetic. Every moment, too, there was 
a change, and I suppose it is true that the 
fleeting glance sees only that which is lovely. 
There were glimpses of canal, and pond, and 
rivulet; of many-colored cattle and of nibbling 
sheep; of little colts scampering away in the 
long, lonesome pastures ; of rooks in sable multi- 
tudes, convened in the newly reaped grain fields 
or making wing to some distant refuge; of 
opulent foliage, and of the various shapes of 
the meadows, deftly enclosed by hedges. Some- 
times a noble manor house was visible, far away, 
while more near a neat cottage, draped with 
vines and nestled among the trees, appeared the 



STRATFORD TO NOTTINGHAM 255 

perfect image of "settled, low content." At 
Byefleld I saw a superb church, the tower 
fretted and having on each corner a round 
turret, and around the church cottages were 
clustered like children at a parent's knee. At 
Morton-Pinckney the hedges were gleaming 
with red berries, and at some distance a gray 
church — showing the four pinnacles so scorned 
by Ruskin — looked grimly forth from among 
the leaves. Little pony-chaises were in waiting, 
the few persons present spoke softly and moved 
slowly, and every denotement was of comfort 
and peace. Soon I saw the pretty village of 
Blakesley, where were many fine Alderney 
cattle, and where the cottage roofs were coated 
with moss, while around its low church tower 
great flights of birds made a lovely picture. 

That country side is especially fertile and 
in the plains of Towcester I could but note the 
rich, dark green of the meadows, so significant 
of abundance. The fields had been reaped, 
and all things put in order, — regular, yet 
sweetly wild. Now and then I saw traces of a 
late harvest, — stacks of yellow grain, yet 



256 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

ungarnered, or sheaves of husk. Blisworth 
came next, with its fine canal, its verdant 
hedges, and its willow-bordered river, and 
presently I was rambling in the streets of 
Northampton, and musing on yet another 
provincial copy of London. A large, gay, red 
brick town it is, populous and busy, its 
antiquities overwhelmed by the stirring life of 
to-day. It has its George Hotel, its Peacock, 
its Shakespeare, its Falcon, its Sheep Street, 
and perched on high, in front of a fine old 
church called All Saints, stands King Charles 
the Second, astonished and astonishing, in the 
martial garb of ancient Rome; but also it has 
its May fair, its Waterloo House, and its 
parade, and in its ample market-place the shops 
are numerous and the traffic is brisk, while up 
and down its highways roll the tram-cars of our 
time, — and Becket, and King Henry the 
Second, and Northampton Castle, and the 
stormy past of history are far away. In North- 
ampton the traveller thinks of Fotheringay 
and Mary Stuart, and of "Burleigh House by 
Stamford town," — for those storied places are 



STRATFORD TO NOTTINGHAM 257 

associated with the Northampton shire, and 
the latter is still extant: and there is need to 
think of the relics that renown these English 
places, when, as you walk the streets, you 
see, everywhere, the same windows full of 
hams and the same clod-poles full of beer. 

Northampton has fine suburbs, and, as its 
arid slate roofs and monotonous rows of red- 
brick dwellings faded in the distance, I was 
cheered to look upon its contiguous, breezy 
meads, intersected by the winding river, while 
the western skies were glorious with mingled 
and blended tints of silver and masses of slate, 
piled one upon another in towering majesty, 
while opposite, in the East, half the heaven 
was one blazing sapphire. The course was 
northerly now, through the cultivated region 
of Brampton, Chipston, and Oxenton, and 
pleasant it was to see the fields of sallows, 
called sometimes the palm (on one of these it 
is that Rosalind, in the immortal comedy, finds 
the verses of Orlando), the ample hill-slopes 
populous with feeding cattle, the bright yellow 
hay-ricks, and the peaceful sheep. Soon a rain- 



258 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

bow formed itself in the East, spanning the 
whole arch of the skies, and then came rain, in 
the midst of sunshine, over a smiling land of 
gardens and flowers, with vistas, in every 
direction, of gleaming meadow, trim copse, 
farms, cottages, black cattle, huge and startling 
against the vivid green, and spired churches on 
distant hills, with birds flying over them, and 
evanescent glints of sunlight on the parti- 
colored uplands far away. 

Words can only hint the alluring loveliness 
of these ever-changing pageants. The long 
shadows of the trees slope to the eastward. 
The land rises to crested hill-tops or sinks into 
gentle dells, thick clad with oak and beech, 
and a multitude of rooks and starlings makes 
rapid flight into dim recesses of the wood. 
We have skirted Rutlandshire and are in 
Leicestershire now, still making to the north. 
Here a wonderful double rainbow forms a 
great arch in the heavens bending over the 
beautiful vale of the Trent. The night comes 
slowly on. The fields grow dusky and lone- 
some. The plains are wide, and little towns 



STRATFORD TO NOTTINGHAM 259 

glimmer on the view, with tall chimneys and 
windmills in the distance. Hedges glisten in 
lingering, intermittent rays of the setting sun. 
The hills in the west are half in cloud and half 
in silver mist. The air is cold, fragrant, and 
delicious. Past cosey farm houses, past little 
red and gray villages, through hay-fields, and 
sheep-pastures, and market gardens, over white 
roads and shining rivulets, and so at last the 
pilgrim comes to a sunset haven in the ancient 
city of Nottingham. 



XVII. 
NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD. 

The shire of Nottingham is not very large, 
not more than fifty miles long by thirty broad, 
but it is second to none in the attributes of 
distinctive character, and it contains some of 
the grandest estates and most precious historic 
relics in England. From the esplanade of the 
Castle Museum, on the top of the caverned 
rock which is the highest point in the city, you 
can look toward stately Wollaston in the west; 
Hucknall-Torkard, containing the tomb of 
Byron, and romantic Newstead Abbey, in the 
north; Southwell, with its quaint Abbey and 
lovely chapter-house, the finest in Europe, 
further afield, in the northeast; the Vale of 
Belvoir in the east; and those verdant plains, 
southward, through which, in sun and shadow, 
flows the broad, sumptuous river Trent. Upon 

260 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 261 

every side the scene is enchanting with rural 
charm and impressive with storied antiquity. 
There King Alfred the Great warred with the 
Danes: there the Norman William laid upon 
the people his strong hand of conquest and 
tyranny: there Robin Hood and his merry 
followers "fleeted the time," in the golden age: 
there Roger Mortimer and his wicked paramour 
Isabella were seized by King Edward the 
Third, — suddenly coming upon them through 
those subterranean caves and passages which 
are practicable still for the visitor of To-day; 
and there, when the Wars of the Roses were 
surging around the sturdy citadel of Notting- 
ham, often came that expeditious, intrepid, 
Richard of Glo'ster, the most brilliant, 
dangerous, fateful, fascinating figure in the 
royal annals of England. Not far away, and 
easily to be reached by a brief journey to 
either Worksop or Mansfield, is the pic- 
turesque region of Sherwood Forest, part of 
which is still preserved, and through that 
fragrant, verdurous tract, at frequent intervals 
of beauty, are disposed the opulent estates of 



262 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Welbec, Clumber, Rufford, Hardwick, and 
Thoresby, conspicuous among the stateliest of 
English homes, lovely with scenery, haunted 
by legend, glorious with art, and incomparable 
in dignity of repose. 

Every place has a history, but the inhabit- 
ants, as a rule, seldom consider it. No mat- 
ter which city you visit, you will find that 
the people who live in it To-day are chiefly 
anxious as to how they shall live in it 
To-morrow. They are but little concerned 
as to its antiquities, and, habitually, they 
care not for the Past, disregarding even 
those monitions of its experience which might 
well serve to ameliorate their present con- 
dition. Nottingham is the city in which King 
Charles the First reared his standard, when at 
length he determined to hazard his cause on 
the arbitrament of battle against the Parlia- 
ment of England, and surely if any spot ought 
to be marked it is the spot on which that 
ominous ceremony occurred. Nothing com- 
memorates it; nothing designates it. The 
exact place is not known, but it is believed 







° - s 






= > ^ a 



t<q ;^ 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 263 

to be in the grounds of a hospital near the 
Castle. Henry Kirke White, next to Chatter- 
ton the most remarkable boy poet ever born 
in England, was a native of Nottingham, but 
the only commemoration of him in that city 
is a coarse portrait, on the exterior of his 
birthplace. White's father was a butcher, and 
a part of the house in which the poet was born 
is a butcher's shop now, as it was then — 
another part of it being a beer-shop. White, 
born March 21, 1785, died October 19, 1806, 
in his twenty-first year, and was buried in 
Cambridge, where his death occurred. His 
birthplace, a little, low, two-story cottage, 
stands at the end of a narrow lane, called 
Exchange Alley, leading from Cheapside to 
the spacious Market Place of Nottingham, 
said to be the largest market-place in Eng- 
land. The room that was the poet's, — a 
"study," the lad called it, — is a sort of closet, 
just over the door of the beer-shop, lit by a 
tiny window, and in all ways suited for a 
doll. Many a sad hour the poor lad passed 
in that room. They used him as an errand- 



264 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

boy, to deliver butcher's meat, and then set 
him at a stocking-loom, and then made him a 
lawyer's clerk, and at last contrived to send 
him to Cambridge University, where he killed 
himself with hard study, — dying, of a con- 
sumption, before he had begun to live. I 
prompted the vender of beer in the poet's 
birthplace to talk about the house of the 
poet, and I was amused by his opinion 
that the small room in which the boy dwelt 
proved very favorable to his poetical com- 
position, because, being small and containing 
scarcely anything, it could not distract his 
attention from his thoughts. That sapient 
utterance was delivered in a little tap-room, 
containing benches, tables, and a cosey fire- 
place, and being an ideal nook for such con- 
vivial souls as like to do their tippling in rustic 
peace. 

White was fond of Clifton Grove, which is 
about three miles south of Nottingham, on the 
banks of the Trent, and one of his best poems 
celebrates that breezy park. It was the con- 
viction of the tapster in the Kirke White ale- 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 265 

house that when the poet had visited Clifton 
Grove and returned to his little bedroom he 
was especially blessed in being able to record 
his recollections of Nature, without anything 
near to hamper his genius. Another of White's 
favorite haunts was the village of Wilford, and 
the visitor to Wilford church can see there a 
marble medallion portrait of him, inscribed "In 
Memoriam, H. K. W." All readers of poetry 
are acquainted with Byron's fine lines about 
White, in the "English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers": the figure of "the struck eagle," 
bitterly aware that his own feather had winged 
the slaughterous shaft now quivering in his 
heart, is too felicitous to be forgotten, is 
worthy even to be remembered with Gold- 
smith's noble image of the tall cliff with roll- 
ing clouds around its base and eternal sunshine 
on its summit: but a suitable monument to 
Henry Kirke White in the city of Nottingham 
would be a fitting crown to Byron's tribute and 
a worthy denotement of right public feeling. 
The boy poet of Nottingham died before he 
had fully uttered his message, but he struck 



266 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the true note, he lived long enough to show him- 
self veritably a poet (as, for example, in his 
"Rosemary"), and the representative, pathetic 
experience of genius fettered by cruel circum- 
stance and baffled by early death is crystallized 
in the story of his career. 

An apathy more singular than that relative 
to White seemed to exist in Nottingham as to 
that extraordinary bard and mystic Philip 
James Bailey, author of the marvellous poem of 
"Festus," — a work which greatly stimulated the 
reading and appreciation of poetry when it was 
first published, more than sixty years ago. In 
America that poem passed through thirty 
editions, from not one of which did its author 
ever receive even a penny. Bailey was born 
in Nottingham, and there he lived and died. 
The house of his birth, a four-story, brick 
structure, stood at Weekday Cross, and was 
demolished, in 1895, to make room for a rail- 
way. No local memorial of him exists, other 
than a bust, in the Art Museum, placed there 
since his death, and, though he was living dur- 
ing one of my visits to Nottingham, when it 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 267 

was my great privilege to meet him, at his home, 
in the Rope Walk, few persons seemed aware 
of his existence. He died, September 6, 1902, 
aged eighty-six. 

The most illustrious name associated with 
Nottingham is that of the poet Byron. He 
was born in London, but the Byron family 
has been conspicuous in Nottinghamshire since 
the Norman Conquest; the poet's ancestral 
home is only eight miles from the shire capital, 
his grave is nearer, and at the top of 
Standard Hill, near the Castle, can still be 
seen, substantially unchanged, an old, ivy-clad, 
brick dwelling, named Newstead House, in 
which, from time to time (1798-1803), he 
resided, in company with his eccentric mother. 
The city and the neighborhood, — Newstead 
Abbey, Annesley, where dwelt his first love, 
Mary Chaworth, Southwell, Hucknall-Torkard, 
— are eloquent of him, but no monument 
to him has been placed in Nottingham. 
The inhabitants do not appear to know, 
— or, if they know, seemingly they do not 
care, — that one of the greatest poets that 



268 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

ever lived was associated with their city, 
and that his ashes rest almost at their civic 
threshold. 

Byron's personal associations with Newstead 
must have been intimate and precious. He 
inherited his title and property in 1798, upon 
the death, without direct lineal descendants, 
of his great-uncle, called "The Wicked Lord 
Byron," and in the autumn of that year he 
was conveyed from Aberdeen to Newstead, 
by his mother, to take possession of the estate. 
The house was in a dilapidated condition, and 
for that reason, and also because she wished 
to obtain, in the neighboring city, surgical or 
mechanical treatment for her boy's lame foot, 
Mrs. Byron took lodgings in Nottingham, and 
that was Byron's home for about a year, when 
he was taken to Sloane Terrace, London. In 
1801 he was at Cheltenham, in 1802 at Bath, 
but in 1803 Mrs. Byron again lodged in Not- 
tingham, while her boy was sent to Harrow 
School, and Newstead Abbey was rented. In 
1804, and thereafter for some time, Mrs. Byron 
dwelt at Southwell, in a house called Burgate 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 269 

Manor, and there the youth passed his vaca- 
tions, often visiting Newstead and also making 
intimate acquaintance with Annesley. In 1805 
Byron went to Cambridge University, and it 
was not until the fall of 1808 that he estab- 
lished himself at Newstead. He was there 
when his dog Boatswain died, November, 

1808, and there, at about that time, 1808-1809, 
he wrote his famous satire, "English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers," which has much of Pope's 
felicitous sarcasm and melodious style, with- 
out any of his deep-seated malignity, and which 
its author lived to regret. He went abroad in 

1809, soon after attaining his majority, but 
he was again at Newstead, after the death of 
his mother, in August, 1811; he saw the ghost 
of the Black Friar there, in 1814, according to 
Moore's "Life" and to a passage in "Don 
Juan"; he was there when he received Miss 
Milbanke's consent to become his wife, and 
he lived there, for a while, after their mar- 
riage, which occurred January 2, 1815. In 
April, 1816, he left England, never to return, 
and in 1818 his former school-fellow, Colonel 



270 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

J. Wildman, bought the Abbey and its con- 
tents, for £180,000. 

Newstead Abbey was founded and endowed 
by King Henry the Second, in expiation of 
Ms crime in having caused the murder of the 
great Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas-a- 
Becket. When the monasteries throughout 
England were dissolved by King Henry the 
Eighth, Newstead was, by a royal grant, given, 
1540, to Sir John Byron, and thereafter, for 
two hundred and seventy-eight years, that 
estate remained in possession of the Byron 
family. After Edgehill Sir John Byron, who 
led a brave troop at that battle, and did good 
service for King Charles the First, was, 1643, 
made a Baron of the realm, with the title of 
Lord Byron of Rochdale, a title which, in 
course of time, was inherited by the poet. 

Visitors who lodge at the George Hotel in 
Nottingham or at the Swan Hotel in Mans- 
field, can, on certain days of the week, obtain 
cards of introduction that will insure them 
access to parts of the Abbey, upon the pay- 
ment of a small fee, and of late years many 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 271 

travellers have profited by that arrangement, 
obtaining at least a glimpse of that romantic 
building, part a residence and part a ruin. 
To me Newstead was long the home of highly 
esteemed acquaintances. The late Colonel 
W. F. Webb was its owner when I knew it, 
and I had the privilege of seeing its treasures 
under his hospitable guidance. Colonel Webb 
bought the Abbey, after the death of Colonel 
Wildman, who had bought it from Lord 
Byron, and he restored as much of it as should 
have been restored, accomplishing that work 
in a sympathetic spirit and with exquisite taste. 
The rooms that Byron occupied are adjacent to 
the west end of the ruined church, on the 
second story of the dwelling, accessible by a 
circular stone staircase from the cloister, and 
are carefully kept in the condition in which 
they were when he dwelt in them. The visitor 
sees a large square bedstead, the posts of which 
are ornamented with coronets, a large mirror, 
a table, various prints, an oriel window, and a 
portrait of old Joe Murray, Byron's butler. 
That portrait, which is remarkably life-like, 



272 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

hangs in Byron's dressing-room, and among 
all the relics of the place it impressed me as 
the most significant. Moore, in his biography 
of his brother poet and comrade, mentions 
that Byron, when at dinner, would fill a tum- 
bler with Madeira and pass it, with a kind 
word, to old Joe Murray, standing behind 
his chair. 

Next to Byron's bedroom is a smaller room, 
formerly connected with the church, to which 
the monks (they were of the order of St. 
Augustine) were brought to die. It is said 
to be haunted, and well it might be. A bed 
in that room is covered with a handsome quilt, 
richly and finely embroidered with emblems of 
the saints, — a solace for perturbed spirits of 
this world, if not of the other. Opening from 
the cloister is a vault, now a store-house, which 
Byron used as a bath. His study, in which 
he wrote "English Bards," is on the lower 
floor, a low room, containing several stone 
columns to support a vaulted roof: in Colonel 
Webb's time it was used as a schoolroom 
for his children. The great hall, seventy feet 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 273 

by twenty-five, in which Byron and his gay 
comrades ("Monks" they called themselves, and 
the young poet was their "Abbot") sometimes 
practised with pistols and drank Burgundy 
from a human skull, is now a sumptuous 
drawing-room, adorned with many paintings 
and filled with objects of beauty. One of the 
paintings is the Phillips portrait of Byron, 
marvellous for life and color, a picture to 
which no engraving has done justice. The 
poet had indeed a face of extraordinary beauty, 
if that painting correctly represents him, and 
to look upon it with intuitive eyes, remembering 
the production of his astonishing poetic genius, 
is readily to understand the havoc that he 
made of happiness and life. Another por- 
trait shows that afflicted Earl of Arundel who 
destroyed his boy's reason by striking him 
with a cane, and who caused the dreadful inci- 
dent to be thus imperishably recorded, in 
expiation of that terrible though accidental 
sin. Matthew Arnold has written a sonnet 
on that picture. Still another represents "The 
Wicked Lord Byron," whose ghost, it is whis- 



274 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

pered, still "walks," in a midnight hour, the 
long corridors and shadowy chambers of this 
gaunt, mysterious, solemn house. The monk's 
skull, which Byron used as a goblet, having 
had it scraped, polished, and mounted in silver, 
has been reverently buried, — the place of its 
burial being now known to only one person. 
Among the relics is the piece of the tree trunk 
(the tree decayed and was cut down) on 
which Byron carved his name and that of his 
beloved half-sister, so cruelly maligned in our 
day, Augusta, Mrs. Leigh. In one of the 
corridors is a jacket that Byron wore when in 
Greece: it had been made for his associate 
Trelawney, but, proving small for that stalwart 
person, it was taken by the poet. The son of 
Byron's valet, Fletcher, stole it from his father 
and carried it to the Cape of Good Hope, 
wherefrom, after some adventures, it found its 
way, duly authenticated, into the hands of 
Colonel Webb, and thus to the early home of 
its old owner. 

In one of the many sumptuous chambers of 
Newstead is a bed in which Oliver Cromwell 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 275 

slept. Several of the rooms are associated 
with great Princes of the Past, — one of them 
with King Edward the Third. In front of 
the Abbey, beyond a wide lawn, glimmers the 
lake, so finely described in "Don Juan." Back 
of the Abbey extends a spacious garden, behind 
which, dense and lofty, rise the old trees of a 
stately park. Writing of Newstead in 1814, 
Byron said: "The ghosts and the gothics and 
the waters and the desolation make it lovely." 
The same words might truly be said of it 
to-day. I looked at the leaden satyrs in the 
grove, and at the tarn over which, even at 
noon-day, the bats are flitting, and I paused 
at the Wishing Well, and lingered at the mas- 
sive monument over the dog, Boatswain. That 
monument stands where once the chancel of 
the Abbey stood, but now it is merely an 
eccentric, somewhat melancholy ornament of the 
garden, — for only the west wall and various 
fragments of the church remain. While gazing 
on that inscription, which vaunts the virtue 
and fidelity of the canine animal as superior 
to that of any possible human being, — 



276 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend, 

The first to welcome, foremost to defend, 

Whose honest heart is still his master's own, 

Who labors, fights, loves, breathes for him alone, — 

I could not but remember its erratic author's 
subsequent reference to another canine pet, 
"half wolf on the she side," as having greeted 
him on his return after an absence, by tearing 
out the seat of his trousers, nor could I avoid 
remembering and contrasting with that char- 
acterization the lines he wrote in "Childe 
Harold : 

Perchance my dog will whine in vain, 

Till fed by stranger hands, 
But long ere I come back again, 

He'd tear me where he stands. 

In the vault beneath the dog's monu- 
ment there is a stone table, supported 
by four piers, large enough to hold two 
coffins, and beneath the table is the coffin of 
Boatswain. It was Byron's wish that his 
remains and those of his faithful servant Joe 
Murray should rest in that sepulchre, and once 



NOTTINGHAM AND NEWSTEAD 277 

he ordered the draft of a Will, containing an 
injunction to that effect; but Byron's body 
was buried, beside that of his mother, in a vault 
beneath the chancel of the church of St. James, 
at Hucknall-Torkard. Joe Murray objected to 
an interment with the dog, and the table 
remains unoccupied. 

Newstead Abbey is indeed a place for 
reverie, inspiring solemn thought upon a won- 
derful mind, a career equally brilliant and 
mournful, and a body of poetic literature which, 
considered as the work of a man who lived 
only thirty-six years, is unexampled, whether 
for volume, variety, scope of subject, majesty 
of thought, vitality of feeling, or command of 
style. Byron's faults and misdeeds, many and 
serious, should be left to a Justice not of 
man. The power and beauty of his poetry 
have impressed it on the heart of the world. 
The laurel that honors his name will never 
fade. More and more, as the years drift away, 
the tide of homage will flow toward the haunts 
of his romantic youth, the austere solitude of 
his ancestral home, and the sad precincts of 



278 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

his early grave, and many a pilgrim, looking, 
as I have looked, on the walls of Newstead 
Abbey, fading in the distance, will feel that he 
has sought and found a shrine of inspiration to 
reject every allurement of passion and to hold 
fast by the worship of art, truth, and beauty. 

Note. — The reproach of having left unhonored the 
memory of the great poet so immediately associated 
with its history has, of late, been in some measure 
removed by the municipality of Nottingham. A Chair 
of Literature, bearing the name of Byron, was estab- 
lished in the University College of Nottingham, late 
in the autumn of 1910, with the purpose, officially 
avowed, of "bringing home to the city and the neighbor- 
hood the worth of Byron's memory and his eminence 
as a poet." As remarked by Shakespeare, "Better late 
than never — and never once too late!" Perhaps the 
light which has dawned upon Nottingham will presently 
spread to London, and the liberality of thought which, 
forgiving the infirmities of human nature, could place 
the bust of Burns in the Poets' Corner of Westminster 
Abbey, will allow a niche in that hallowed place for the 
effigy of Byron. The Masonic Burial Service contains 
a passage, equally touching and admonitory, which 
enjoins us to "suffer the infirmities of human nature 
to plead for him who can no longer plead for himself." 



XVIII. 

BYRON. 

On a night in 1785, when Mrs. Siddons 
was acting at Edinburgh, the play being 
"The Fatal Marriage" and the character 
Isabella, a young lady of Aberdeenshire, Miss 
Catherine Gordon, of Gight, was in the 
audience. There is a point in that tragedy 
at which Isabella recognizes her first husband, 
whom she had supposed to be dead, and in 
whose absence she had been married to another, 
and her consternation, grief, and rapture are 
sudden and excessive. Mrs. Siddons, at that 
point, always caused a great effect. The words 
are "My husband, my Biron!" On this night, 
at the moment when the wonderful actress 
sent forth her wailing, heart-piercing cry, as 
she uttered those words, Miss Gordon gave 
a frantic scream, fell into violent hysterics, 

279 



280 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

and was borne out of the theatre, shrieking 
"My Biron, my Biron!" At the time of 
that incident she had not met the man by 
whom she was afterward wedded, — the Hon. 
John Byron, whose wife she became, about a 
year later. Their first-born and only child 
was George Gordon, afterward Lord Byron, 
the poet, and among the many aspects of his 
life which impress the thoughtful reader of 
its strange and melancholy story none is more 
striking than the dramatic aspect of it, so 
strangely prefigured in this event. 

Censure of Byron, whether as a man or as 
a writer, has spent its force. It is more than 
a hundred years since he was born, and almost 
as many since he died. Everybody who 
wished to say a word against him has had 
ample opportunity for saying it, and there is 
evidence that the opportunity has not been 
neglected. The record was long ago made up. 
Everybody knows that Byron's conduct was 
sometimes deformed by frenzy and stained by 
vice. Everybody knows that Byron's writings 
are occasionally marred with profanity and 



BYRON 281 

licentiousness, and that they contain a quantity 
of crude verse. If he had never been married, 
or if, being married, his domestic life had not 
ended in disaster and scandal, his personal 
reputation would stand higher than it now 
does, in the esteem of virtuous society. If 
about one-third of what he wrote had never 
been published, his reputation as a man of 
letters would stand higher than it now does, 
in the esteem of stern judges of literary art. 
After an exhaustive discussion of the subject 
in every aspect of it, after every variety of 
hostile assault, and after praise sounded in 
every key of enthusiasm and in almost every 
language of the world, those truths remain. 
It is a pity that Byron was not a virtuous 
man and a good husband. It is a pity that 
he was not invariably a scrupulous literary 
artist, that he wrote so much, and that almost 
everything he wrote was published. But, 
when all this has been said, it remains a solid 
and immovable truth that Byron was a great 
poet and that he continues to be a great power 
in the literature and life of the world. Nobody 



282 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

who pretends to read anything omits to read 
"Childe Harold." 

To touch this complex and delicate subject 
in only a superficial manner it may not be 
amiss to say that the world is under obliga- 
tion to Byron, if for nothing else, for the 
spectacle of a romantic, impressive, and 
instructive life. His agency in that spectacle 
was involuntary, but, all the same, he presented 
it. He was a man of great genius; his faculty 
of expression was colossal, and his conduct 
was absolutely genuine. No man in literature 
ever lived who lived himself more fully. His 
assumptions of disguise only made him more 
obvious and transparent. He kept nothing 
back. His heart was laid absolutely bare. 
We know as much about him as we know 
about Dr. Johnson, and still his personality 
endures the test of our knowledge and remains 
unique, romantic, fascinating, prolific of moral 
admonition, and infinitely pathetic. Byron in 
poetry, like Edmund Kean in acting, is a 
figure that completely fills the imagination, 
profoundly stirs the heart, and never ceases to 



BYRON 283 

impress and charm, even while it afflicts, the 
sensitive mind. This consideration alone, aside 
from the obligation that the world owes to the 
better part of Byron's writings, is vastly sig- 
nificant of the great personal force that is 
inherent in his name and memory. 

It has been considered necessary to account 
for the gloom of Byron's poetry by represent- 
ing him to have been a criminal, afflicted with 
remorse for his many and hideous crimes. His 
widow, apparently a monomaniac, after long 
brooding over the remembrance of a calamitous 
married life, — brief, unhappy, and terminated 
by separation, — whispered against him, and 
against his half-sister, a vile and hideous 
charge, and this, to the disgrace of American 
literature, was subsequently brought forward 
by a distinguished female writer of America, 
much noted for her works of fiction and 
especially memorable for that one. The expla- 
nation of the mental distress exhibited in the 
poet's writings was thought to be effectually 
provided in that disclosure. But, as that 
revolting story, — desecrating graves, insulting 



284. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

a wonderful genius, and casting infamy upon 
the name of an affectionate, faithful, virtuous 
wife, — fell to pieces the moment it was 
examined, the student of Byron's grief- 
stricken nature remained no wiser than before 
that figment of a diseased imagination had 
been divulged. Surely, however, it ought not 
to be considered mysterious that Byron's 
poetry is often sad. The best poetry of the 
best poets is touched with sadness. "Hamlet" 
has never been mistaken for a merry produc- 
tion. "Macbeth" and "King Lear" do not 
commonly produce laughter. Shelley and Keats 
sing as near to heaven's gate as anybody, and 
both of them are often sad. Scott was 
as brave, hopeful, and cheerful as any poet 
that ever lived, and Scott's poetry is at its 
best in his dirges and in his ballads of love 
and loss. The "Elegy" and "The Ancient 
Mariner" certainly are great poems, but neither 
of them is festive. Byron often wrote sadly 
because he was a man of melancholy tempera- 
ment, and because he deeply felt the pathos 
of mortal life, the awful mystery with which 



BYRON 285 

it is surrounded, the pain with which it is 
usually attended, the tragedy with which it 
commonly is accompanied, the frail tenure 
with which its loves and hopes are held, and 
the inexorable death with which it is continu- 
ously environed and at last extinguished; 
and Byron was an unhappy man for the 
reason that, possessing every elemental natural 
quality in excess, his goodness was constantly 
opposed, in torturing conflict, to his evil. 
"He had fire," said the old poet Samuel 
Rogers, "but it was hell-fire." "I knew his 
heart," said Pietro Gamba; "more loved he 
could not have been." "He was full of sen- 
sibility," said Hobhouse; "no man ever lived 
who had such devoted friends," — surely a sign 
of innate goodness. The tempest, the clangor, 
and the agony of Byron's writings are denote- 
ments of the struggle between good and evil 
that was perpetually afflicting his soul. Had 
he been a radically wicked man, a Timour or a 
Cenci, he would have lived a life of comfortable 
depravity and never would have written at all. 
Monsters do not suffer. 



286 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

The true appreciation of Byron is not that 
of youth but that of manhood. Youth is 
captured by his pictorial and sentimental 
attributes. Youth beholds him as a nautical 
Adonis, standing lonely upon a barren cliff 
and gazing at a stormy sunset over the iEgean 
Sea. Everybody knows that familiar picture, 
— with the wide, open collar, the great eyes, 
the wild hair, and the ample neckcloth flow- 
ing in the breeze. It is pretty, but it is not 
representative of the actual man. If ever at 
any time he was that sentimental image he 
speedily outgrew that condition, just as those 
observers of him who truly understand Byron 
have long outgrown their juvenile sympathy 
with that frail and puny ideal of a great poet. 
Manhood perceives a different individual and is 
captured by a different attraction. It is only 
when the first extravagant and effusive 
enthusiasm has run its course, and perhaps 
ended in revulsion,, that we come to know 
Byron for what actually he was, and to feel 
the tremendous power of his genius. Senti- 
ment has commemorated him, in the margin 



BYRON 287 

of Hyde Park, as in the fancy of many a 
callow youth and green girl, with the statue 
of a sailor-lad waiting for a spark from 
heaven, while a Newfoundland dog reclines at 
his feet. It is a mistake. Byron was a man, 
and terribly in earnest, and it is only by 
earnest thinkers that his mind and works are 
understood. At this distance of time the 
scandals of a corrupt age, equally with the 
frailties of its most brilliant and most illus- 
trious poetical genius, can well be left to rest 
in the oblivion of the grave. The generation 
that is living at the beginning of the twentieth 
century should remember of Byron only that he 
was the uncompromising friend of liberty, 
that he did much to emancipate the human 
mind from every form of bigotry and tyranny, 
that he augmented, as no man had done since 
Dryden, the power and flexibility of the noble 
English tongue, and that he enriched litera- 
ture with passages of poetry which, for sub- 
limity, beauty, tenderness, and eloquence, have 
seldom been equalled and have never been 
excelled. 



XIX. 

HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH. 

It was near the close of a fragrant, golden 
summer day, when, having driven from Not- 
tingham, I alighted in the market-place of the 
little town of Hucknall-Torkard, on a pilgrim- 
age to the grave of Byron. The town is 
modern and commonplace in appearance, — a 
straggling collection of low brick dwellings, 
mostly occupied by colliers. On that day it 
appeared at its worst; for the widest part 
of its main street was rilled with stalls, benches, 
wagons, and canvas-covered structures for the 
display of vegetables and other commodities, 
which were thus offered for sale, and it was 
thronged with rough, noisy, dirty persons, 
intent on barter and traffic, and not indisposed 
to boisterous pranks and mirth, as they pushed 
and jostled each other among the crowded 

288 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 289 

booths. This main street terminates at the wall 

of the graveyard in which stands the little gray 

church wherein Byron was buried. There is 

an iron gate in the centre of the wall, and in 

order to reach this it was necessary to thread 

the mazes of the market-place, and to push 

aside the canvas flaps of a peddler's stall which 

had been placed close against it. Next to the 

churchyard wall is a little cottage, with a bit 

of garden, devoted, at that time, to potatoes; 

and there, while waiting for the sexton, I talked 

with an aged man who said that he remembered, 

as an eye-witness, the funeral of Byron. 

He stated his age and said that his name 

was William Callandyne. Pointing to the 

church, he indicated the place of the Byron 

vault. "I was the last man," he said, "that 

went down into it, before he was buried there. 

I was a young fellow then, and curious to 

see what was going on. The place was full 

of skulls and bones. I wish you could see 

my son; he's a clever lad, only he ought to 

have more of the suaviter in modo." Thus, 

with the garrulity of wandering age, he 



290 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

prattled on, but his mind was clear and his 
memory tenacious and positive. There is a 
good prospect from the region of Hucknall- 
Torkard church, and pointing into the dis- 
tance, when his mind had been brought back 
to the subject of Byron, my aged interlocutor 
described, with minute specification of road and 
lane, — seeming to assume that the names and 
the turnings were familiar to me, — the course 
of the funeral train, from Nottingham to the 
church. "There were eleven carriages," he said. 
"They didn't go to the Abbey" (meaning New- 
stead), "but came directly here. There were 
many people to look at them. I remember all 
about it, and I'm an old man — eighty-two. 
You're an Italian, I should say," he added. By 
this time the sexton had come and unlocked 
the gate, and parting from Mr. Callandyne we 
presently made our way into the church of 
St. James, locking the churchyard gate, to 
exclude rough and possibly mischievous fol- 
lowers. A strange and sad contrast, I thought, 
between this coarse, turbulent place, by a 
malign destiny ordained for the grave of 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 291 

Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic 
church and precinct, at Stratford-upon-Avon, 
which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare! 
(Since this paper was written the buildings 
that flanked the front wall of Hucknall-Tor- 
kard churchyard have been removed, the street 
in front of it has been widened, and the church 
has been "restored" and considerably altered.) 
The sexton of the church of St. James and 
parish clerk of Hucknall-Torkard was Mr. 
John Brown, and a man of sympathetic 
intelligence, kind heart, and interesting charac- 
ter I found him to be, — large, dark, stalwart, 
but gentle alike in manner and feeling, and 
considerate of his visitor. The pilgrim to the 
literary shrines of England does not always 
find the neighboring inhabitants either sym- 
pathetic with his reverence or conscious of 
especial sanctity or interest appertaining to 
the relics which they possess; but honest, manly 
John Brown of Hucknall-Torkard understood 
both the hallowing charm of the place and 
the sentiment, not to say the profound emotion, 
of the traveller who now beheld for the first 



292 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

time the tomb of Byron. The church has 
been considerably altered since Byron was 
buried in it, 1824, yet it retains its fundamental 
structure and its ancient peculiarities. The 
tower, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, 
dark, rugged, and grim, gives indication of 
great age. It is of a kind often met with in 
ancient English towns: you can see its brothers 
at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, 
Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over 
the northern heights of London: but amid its 
tame surroundings in this little colliery settle- 
ment it looms with a peculiar, frowning 
majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique 
and impressive. The edifice is of the cus- 
tomary crucial form, — a low, stone structure, 
having a peaked roof, which is supported by 
four great pillars, on each side of the centre 
aisle. The ceiling, which is made of heavy 
timbers, forms almost a true arch above the 
nave. There are four large windows on each 
side of the nave, and two on each side of 
the chancel, which is beneath a roof some- 
what lower than that of the main building. 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 293 

Under the pavement of the chancel and back 
of the altar rail, — at which it was my privilege 
to kneel, while gazing upon this sacred spot, 
— is the grave of Byron. (Revisiting this place, 
September 10, 1890, I found that the chancel 
has been lengthened, that the altar and the 
mural tablets have been moved back from the 
Byron vault, and that his gravestone is now 
outside of the rail.) Nothing is written on 
the stone that covers his sepulchre except the 
name of 

BYRON 

with the dates of his birth and death, in brass 
letters, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, in 
brass, the gift of the King of Greece ; and never 
did a name seem more stately or a place more 
hallowed. The dust of the poet reposes 
between that of his mother, on his right hand, 
and that of his Ada, — "sole daughter of my 
house and heart," — on his left. The mother 
died on August 1, 1811; the daughter, who had 
by marriage become the Countess of Lovelace, 
in 1852. "I buried her with my own hands," 



294 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

said the sexton, John Brown, when, after a 
little time, he rejoined me at the altar rail. "I 
told them exactly where he was laid, when they 
wanted to put that brass on the stone ; I remem- 
bered it well, for I lowered the coffin of the 
Countess of Lovelace into this vault, and laid 
her by her father's side." And when presently 
we went into the vestry he produced the 
Register of Burials and displayed the record 
of that interment, in the following words: 
"1852. Died at 69 Cumberland Place, Lon- 
don. Buried December 3. Aged thirty-six. 
— Curtis Jackson." The Byrons were a short- 
lived race. The poet himself had just turned 
thirty-six; his mother was only forty-six when 
she passed away. This name of Curtis Jackson 
in the register was that of the rector or curate 
then incumbent but now departed. The reg- 
ister is a long narrow book made of parch- 
ment and full of various crabbed handwritings, 
— a record similar to those which are so care- 
fully treasured at the church of the Holy 
Trinity at Stratford, but it is more dilapidated. 
Another relic shown by John Brown was 




s a 



a 

o <•§ i 



50 i. 5a 

5 ~ = 



■S3 C_, "*« 






HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 295 

a bit of embroidery, presenting the arms of 
the Byron family. It had been used at 
Byron's funeral, and thereafter was long kept 
in the church, though latterly with but little 
care. When the Rev. Curtis Jackson came 
there he beheld this frail memorial with pious 
disapprobation. "He told me," said the sex- 
ton, "to take it home and burn it. I did 
take it home, but I didn't burn it; and when 
the new rector came he heard of it and asked 
me to bring it back, and a lady gave the 
frame to put it in." Framed it is, and likely 
now to be always preserved in this interesting 
church; and earnestly do I wish that I could 
remember, in order that I might mention it 
with respect, the name of the clergyman who 
could thus rebuke bigotry, and welcome and 
treasure in his church that shred of silk which 
once rested on the coffin of Byron. Another 
and considerably modified version of that 
anecdote reached me, some time later. John 
Brown, I was assured, was "somewhat fond 
of romancing," and being subsequently appealed 
to, on this subject, he told a different tale. 



296 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

The damp of the church, he declared, had 
caused the fabric of the embroidered arms 
used at Byron's funeral to decay to a con- 
siderable extent, whereupon he asked the Rev. 
Curtis Jackson for instruction as to what 
disposition he should make of it. Mr. Jackson 
decided that it could not be saved and there- 
fore ought to be burnt. On taking the relic 
to his home, for the purpose of burning it, 
Brown consulted his wife, an expert needle- 
woman, who said that she thought she could 
mend it. By her, accordingly, it was cleaned 
and repaired, and thereafter, with the sanction 
of Mr. Jackson, "it was put back in its frame 
and hung up in the church." 

A companion relic shown by John Brown is 
a large piece of cardboard bearing the inscrip- 
tion which is upon the coffin of the poet's 
mother, and which bore some part in the 
obsequies of that singular woman, — a creature 
full of faults, but capable of inspiring deep 
love. On the night after Byron arrived at 
Newstead, whither he repaired from London, 
on receiving news of her illness, only to find 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 297 

her dead, he was found sitting, in the dark, 
and sobbing, beside the corpse. "I had but 
one friend in the world," he said, "and she 
is gone." He was soon to publish "Childe 
Harold," and to gain hosts of admirers, and 
have the world at his feet, but he spoke what 
he felt, in that dark room on that desolate 
night. Thoughts of these things, and of many- 
other strange passages and incidents in his 
brief, checkered, glorious, lamentable life, 
thronged into my mind as I stood there, in 
presence of those relics and so near his dust, 
while the church grew dark and the silence 
seemed to deepen in the dusk of the gathering 
night. 

A book has been kept, for many years, at 
the church of Hucknall-Torkard, in which 
visitors, desiring to do so, can write their 
names. The first book provided for this pur- 
pose was an album given to the church by 
the poet Sir John Bowring, and in that there 
was a record of visitations during the years 
from 1825 to 1834. That book disappeared 
in the latter year, or soon afterward, and it 



298 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

is said to be in the possession of a resident 
of one of the southern cities of the United 
States, its possessor declaring that he received 
it from one of his relatives, to whom it was 
given or sold by the parish clerk of Hucknall- 
Torkard, in 1834. The catalogue of pilgrims 
to the grave of Byron, during the last eighty 
years, is not a long one. The votaries of that 
poet are far less numerous than those of Shake- 
speare. Custom has made the visit to Strat- 
ford "a property of easiness," and Shake- 
speare is a safe no less than a rightful object 
of worship. The visit to Hucknall-Torkard 
is neither as easy nor as agreeable. On the 
capital of a column near Byron's tomb I saw 
two mouldering wreaths of laurel, which had 
hung there for several years: one brought by 
the Bishop of Norwich, the other by the Ameri- 
can poet Joaquin Miller. It was good to see 
them, and especially to see them beside the 
tablet of white marble which was placed on 
that church wall to commemorate the poet, 
and to be her witness in death, by his 
loving and beloved sister Augusta Mary 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 299 

Leigh, — a name that is the synonym of noble 
fidelity, a name that cruel detraction and 
hideous calumny have done their worst to 
tarnish. That tablet names him "The Author 
of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," and if the 
conviction of thoughtful men and women 
throughout the world can be accepted as an 
authority, no name in the long annals of 
English literature is more certain of immor- 
tality than the name of Byron. His reputa- 
tion can afford the absence of all memorial to 
him in Westminster Abbey, — can endure it, 
perhaps, better than the English nation can, — 
and it can endure the neglect and censure of 
the precinct of Nottingham. That city rejoices 
in many interesting associations, but all that 
really hallows it for the stranger is its asso- 
ciation with the name of Byron. The stranger 
will look in vain, however, for any adequate 
sign of his former connection with that place. 
It is difficult even to find prints or photo- 
graphs of the Byron shrines, in the shops of 
Nottingham. One dealer, from whom I bought 
all the Byron pictures that he possessed, was 



300 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

kind enough to explain the situation, in one 
expressive sentence: "Much more ought to be 
done here as to Lord Byron's memory, that is 
the truth; but the fact is, the first families of 
the county don't approve of him." 

When we came again into the churchyard, 
with its many scattered graves and its quaint 
stones and crosses leaning every way, and hud- 
dled in a strange kind of orderly confusion, 
the great dark tower stood out bold and soli- 
tary in the gloaming, and a chill wind of 
evening had begun to moan around its pin- 
nacles, and through its mysterious belfry 
windows, and in the trees near by, which 
gave forth a mournful whisper. It was hard 
to leave the place, and for a long time I 
stood near the chapel, just above the outer 
wall of the Byron vault: and there the sex- 
ton told me the story of the "White Lady," — 
pointing, as he spoke, to a cottage abutting on 
the churchyard, one window in which commands 
a clear view of the place of Byron's grave. 
(That house has since been removed.) "There 
she lived," he said, "and there she died, and 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 301 

there," pointing to an unmarked grave near 
the pathway, about thirty feet from the Byron 
vault, "I buried her." It is not easy to indi- 
cate his earnest manner. In brief, this lady, 
whose antecedent history no one knew, had, 
according to old Brown, taken up her residence 
in this cottage long subsequent to the burial of 
Byron, and had remained there until she died. 
She was pale, thin, handsome, and she wore 
white garments. Her face was often to be seen 
at that window, whether by night or day, and 
she seemed to be watching the tomb. Once, 
when masons were repairing the church wall, 
she was enabled to descend into the Bryon 
vault, and therefrom she obtained a skull, which 
she declared to be Byron's and which she 
scraped, polished, and made white, and always 
kept beneath her pillow. It was her request, 
often made to the sexton, that she might be 
buried in the churchyard, close to the wall of 
the poet's tomb. "When at last she died," 
said John Brown, "they brought that skull to me, 
and I buried it there, in the ground. It was 
one of the loose skulls from the old vault. She 



302 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

thought it was Byron's, and it pleased her to 
think so. I might have laid her close to this 
wall. I don't know why I didn't." 

In those words the sexton's story ended. It 
was only one more of the myriad hints of 
that romance which the life and poetry of 
Byron have so widely created and diffused, 
and, as such, I have preserved it. I have been 
apprized, however, that John Brown, in his 
narrative to me, confused the story of the 
woman who obtained a skull from the Byron 
vault with that of "the Little White Lady." 
The former, according to the sexton, was a 
Mrs. Morley, and was a person not generally 
known, even in the neighborhood of Newstead. 
The latter, on the contrary, was well known 
there, and she is still remembered and spoken 
of by local inhabitants. She came to that place 
in 1821 and lodged at a f arm-house, still exist- 
ent, not far from Newstead Abbey. No one 
knew whence she came or who she was. She 
was diminutive in body and she invariably 
wore white garments, and thus she acquired the 
designation of "the Little White Lady." Her 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 303 

face was always screened by a white veil. It 
was found that she was deaf and dumb. The 
villagers of Newstead treated her with respect. 
Her days were passed in rambling in the 
grounds of Newstead Abbey, accompanied by 
a large Newfoundland dog, said to be a 
descendant of Byron's Boatswain. Her admira- 
tion for the poet, whom she had never seen, 
amounted to idolatry. Colonel and Mrs. Wild- 
man, who were then living at the Abbey, were 
kind to her and sanctioned her wanderings in 
their park. One evening Mrs. Wildman 
received from her a sealed packet, accompanied 
by a written request that it should not be 
opened until the following day, — a request 
which was respected. On opening the packet 
Mrs. Wildman found a considerable quantity 
of verse, in manuscript, by "the White Lady," 
with a letter expressive of the writer's grati- 
tude for constant kindness, and for the privilege 
which had been allowed her of rambling in 
places associated with Byron. This, the writer 
declared, had been her "only happiness on 
earth." Furthermore, she communicated some 



304 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

particulars relative to her origin, — stating that 
her mother was a daughter of Hon. William 
Byron, and had clandestinely married a man 
named Hyatt, who was one of that gentleman's 
dog-keepers, and, for that reason, had been 
discarded and disowned by her relatives, one 
of whom, indeed, a stranger to her, had 
allowed her an annuity of £13. Mrs. Wild- 
man perceived, by the tone of the letter, that 
it was one of farewell, and that "the White 
Lady" had erroneously supposed her presence 
near the Abbey to have become distasteful to 
its occupants. It was remembered that she 
had been observed to linger at her favorite 
haunts, on the day before, as though she could 
not tear herself away from them, and also that 
she had been seen to cut a wisp of the dog's 
hair, as a souvenir. She gave her name as 
Sophia Hyatt. Mrs. Wildman immediately 
dispatched a groom, on horseback, in quest of 
her, with a letter asking her to return. She 
was traced to Nottingham, and on arriving 
at the starting place, in that city, of the 
London coach, the messenger found her dead 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 305 

body lying on the pavement, surrounded by a 
crowd of strangers. She had been, a few 
moments before, knocked down in the roadway, 
and killed, by a passing team. Her body was 
buried in Hucknall-Torkard churchyard. 

At parting from Hucknall-Torkard church 
I glanced around for some relic of the place 
that might properly be taken away: there was 
neither an ivy leaf shining upon the wall nor 
a flower growing in all the ground; but into 
a crevice of the rock, just above the vicinage of 
Byron's tomb, the wind had at some time blown 
a little earth, and in this a few blades of grass 
were thinly rooted. Those I gathered, and still 
possess, as a memento of an evening at Byron's 
grave. 

THE MISSING REGISTER OF THE BYRON CHURCH 

The Album that was given to Hucknall- 
Torkard church, in 1825, by Sir John Bow- 
ring, to be used as a register of the names 
of visitors to Byron's tomb, disappeared from 
that church in the year 1834, or soon after, 
and it is supposed to have been stolen. In 



306 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

1834 its contents were printed, — from a 
manuscript copy of it, which had been obtained 
from the sexton, — in a book of selections from 
Byron's prose, edited by "J. M. L." Those 
initials stand for the name of Joseph Munt 
Langford, who died in 1884. The dedication 
of that book is in the following words: "To 
the immortal and illustrious fame of Lord 
Byron, the first poet of the age in which he 
lived, these tributes, weak and unworthy of 
him, but in themselves sincere, are inscribed 
with the deepest reverence. — July 1825." At 
that time no memorial of any kind had been 
placed in the church to mark the poet's 
sepulchre, a fact which prompted Sir John 
Bowring to begin his Album with twenty- 
eight lines of verse, of which these are a part: 

A still, resistless influence, 
Unseen but felt, binds up the sense . . . 
And though the master hand is cold, 
And though the lyre it once controlled 
Rests mute in death, yet from the gloom 
Which dwells about this holy tomb 
Silence breathes out more eloquent 
Than epitaph or monument. 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 307 

That register was used from 1825 till 1834. 
It contains eight hundred and fifteen names, 
with which are intertwined twenty-eight 
inscriptions in verse and thirty-six in prose. 
The first name is that of Count Pietro Gamba, 
brother of the Countess Guiccioli, who visited 
his friend's grave on January 31, 1825: but 
this must have been a reminiscent memorandum, 
as the book was not opened till the following 
July. The next entry was made by Byron's 
old servant, the date being September 23, 
1825: "William Fletcher visited his ever-to- 
be-lamented lord and master's tomb." On 
September 21, 1828, the following singular 
record was written: "Joseph Carr, engraver, 
Hound's Gate, Nottingham, visited this place 
for the first time to witness the funeral 
of Lady Byron (mother of the much lamented 
late Lord Byron), August 9th, 1811, whose 
coffin-plate I engraved, and now I once more 
revisit the spot to drop a tear as a tribute 
of unfeigned respect to the mortal remains 
of that noble British bard. 'Tho' lost to sight, 
to memory dear.' " The next notable entry 



308 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

is that of September 3, 1829: "Lord Byron's 
sister, the Honorable Augusta Mary Leigh, 
visited this church." Under the date of Janu- 
ary 8, 1832, are found the names of "M. 
Van Buren, Minister Plenipotentiary from the 
United States; Washington Irving; John 
Van Buren, New York, U.S.A., and J. Wild- 
man." On August 5, 1832, "Mr. Bunn, 
manager of Drury Lane theatre, honored by 
the acquaintance of the illustrious poet, visited 
Lord Byron's tomb, with a party." Edward 
F. Flower and Selina Flower, of Stratford- 
upon-Avon, record their presence, on Sep- 
tember 15, 1832, — the parents of Charles 
Edward Flower and Edgar Flower, of Strat- 
ford. There are several eccentric tributes in 
the register, but the most of them are feeble. 
One of the better kind is this: 

Not in that palace where the dead repose 
In splendid holiness, where Time has spread 
His sombre shadows, and a halo glows 
Around the ashes of the mighty dead, 
Life's weary pilgrim rests his aching head. 
This is his resting-place, and save his own 



HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 309 

No light, no glory round his grave is shed: 
But memory journeys to his shrine alone 
To mark how sound he sleeps, beneath yon simple stone. 

Ah, say, art thou ambitious? thy young breast — 
Oh, does it pant for honors? dost thou chase 
The phantom Fame, in fairy colors drest, 
Expecting all the while to win the race? 
Oh, does the flush of youth adorn thy face 
And dost thou deem it lasting? dost thou crave 
The hero's wreath, the poet's meed of praise? 
Learn that of this, these, all, not one can save 
From the chill hand of death. Behold Childe Harold's 



grave 



XX. 

HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH. 

A good way by which to enter the Lake 
District of England is to travel to Penrith, 
and thence to drive along the shore of Ulls- 
water, or sail upon its crystal bosom, to the 
blooming solitude of Patterdale. Penrith lies 
at the eastern slope of the mountains of West- 
moreland, and you can see the ruins of Pen- 
rith Castle, once the property and abode of 
Richard, Duke of Glo'ster, before he became 
King of England. Penrith Castle was one of 
the estates that were forfeited by the great 
Earl of Warwick, and King Edward the 
Fourth gave it to his brother Richard in 1471. 
It is recorded that Richard lived there for 
five years, from 1452 to 1457, when he was 
Sheriff of Cumberland. Not much remains of 
that ancient structure, and the remnant is 

310 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 311 

s now occupied by a florist. I saw it, under a 
tempest of rain. But travellers must not heed 
the weather. If there are dark days there 
are also bright ones, — and one bright day in 
such a paradise as the English Lakes atones 
for the dreariness of a month of rain. Besides, 
even the darkest days may be brightened by 
gentle companionship. Henry Irving and 
Ernest Bendall were my associates, in that 
expedition. We went from London into West- 
moreland on a mild, sweet day in July, and 
we rambled for some time in that enchanted 
region. It was a delicious experience, and I 
often close my eyes and dream of it, — as I 
am dreaming now. 

In the drive between Penrith and Patterdale 
you see many things that are worthy of regard. 
Among these are the parish church of Pen- 
rith, a building made of red stone, remarkable 
for a massive square tower of great age and 
formidable aspect. In the adjacent churchyard 
are The Giant's Grave and The Giant's 
Thumb, relics of a distant past that strongly 
and strangely affect the imagination. The 



312 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

grave is said to be that of Ewain Caesarius, a 
gigantic individual who reigned over Cumber- 
land in remote Saxon times. The Thumb is 
a rough stone, about seven feet high, present- 
ing a clumsy cross, and, doubtless, com- 
memorative of another mighty warrior. Sir 
Walter Scott, who usually traversed Penrith 
on his journeys between Edinburgh and Lon- 
don, seldom omitted to pause for a view of 
those singular memorials, and Scott, like 
Wordsworth, has left upon this region the 
abiding impress of his splendid genius. Ulfo's 
Lake is Scott's name for Ullswater, and there- 
about is laid the scene of his poem of "The 
Bridal of Triermain." In Scott's day the 
traveller went by coach or on horseback, but 
now, "By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood," 
at the foot of craggy Blencathara, you pause 
at a railway station having threlkeld, in 
large letters, on its official signboard. Another 
strange thing that is passed on the road 
between Penrith and Patterdale is "Arthur's 
Round Table," — a circular terrace of turf, 
slightly raised above the surrounding level, and 




WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

1770-1850 



Time may restore us, in his course, 
Goethe's sage culm and Byron's force, 
But where will Europe's latter hour 
Again find Wordsworth's healing power? 

MATTHEW AKNOI.l). 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 318 

certainly remarkable, whatever may be its his- 
toric or antiquarian merit, for fine texture, 
symmetrical form, and lovely, luxuriant color. 
Antiquarians think it was used for tourna- 
ments in the days of chivalry, but no one 
knows anything about it, except that it is 
very old. Not far from this bit of mys- 
terious antiquity the road winds through a 
quaint village called Tirril, where, in the 
Quaker burial-ground, is the grave of an 
unfortunate young man, Charles Gough, who 
lost his life, by falling from the Striding Edge 
of Helvellyn, in 1805, and whose memory is 
hallowed by Wordsworth and by Scott, in 
poems that almost every schoolboy has read, 
and could never forget, — associated as they 
are with the story of the faithful dog, for 
three months, in that lonesome wilderness, 
vigilant beside the dead body of his master. 

Patterdale possesses this advantage over cer- 
tain other towns and hamlets of the lake 
region, that it is not much frequented by 
tourists. The coach does indeed roll through 
it, at intervals, laden with those miscellaneous, 



314 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

desultory visitors whose pleasure it is to rush 
wildly over the land; and those objects serve 
to remind you that now, even as in Words- 
worth's time, and in a double sense, "the world 
is too much with us." But an old-fashioned 
inn, Kidd's Hotel, still exists, at the head 
of Ullswater, to which fashion has not 
resorted and where kindness presides over the 
traveller's comfort. Close by also is a cosey 
nook called Glenridding, where, if you are a 
lover of solitude and peace, you can find an 
ideal abode. One house, wherein lodging can 
be obtained, was literally embowered in roses 
on that summer evening when first I strolled 
by the fragrant hay-fields on the Patterdale 
shore of Ullswater. The rose flourishes in 
wonderful luxuriance and profusion through- 
out Westmoreland and Cumberland. As you 
drive along the lonely roads your way will 
sometimes be, for many miles, between hedges 
that are bespangled with wild roses and with 
the silver globes of the laurel blossom, while 
around you the lonely mountains, bare of 
foliage except for matted grass and a dense 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 315 

growth of low ferns, tower to meet the clouds. 
It is a wild place, and yet there is a pervad- 
ing spirit of refinement over it all, — as if 
Nature had here wrought her wonders in the 
mood of her finest art: and at the same time 
it is a place of ample variety. The whole 
territory occupied by the lakes and moun- 
tains of this famous district is scarcely more 
than thirty miles square, yet within this 
limit, comparatively narrow, are comprised 
beauties of land and water sufficient to satisfy 
the most passionate worshipper of natural love- 
liness. 

My first night in Patterdale was one of 
tempest. The wind shook the old hotel in 
which I lodged. It was long after midnight 
when I went to rest, and the storm seemed to 
increase in fury as the night wore on. Torrents 
of rain were dashed against the windows. 
Great trees near by creaked and groaned 
beneath the strength of the gale. The cold 
was so severe that blankets were welcome. 
It was my first night in Wordsworth's coun- 
try, and I thought of Wordsworth's lines: 



316 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

There was a roaring in the wind all night; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods. 

The next morning was sweet with sunshine 
and gay with birds and flowers, and all 
semblance of storm and trouble seemed ban- 
ished forever. 

But now the sun is shining calm and bright, 
And birds are singing in the distant woods. 

Wordsworth's poetry expresses the inmost 
soul of those lovely lakes and noble hills, and 
no writer can hope to tread, save remotely 
and with reverent humility, in the footsteps 
of that magician. You understand Words- 
worth better, however, and you love him more 
dearly, for having rambled over his consecrated 
ground. There was not a day when I did 
not, in some shape or another, meet with his 
presence. Whenever I was alone his influence 
came upon me as something unspeakably 
majestic and solemn. Once, on a Sunday, I 
climbed to the top of Place Fell (which is 
2154 feet above the sea-level, while Scawfell 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 317 

Pike is 3210, and Helvellyn is 3118), and 
there, in the short space of two hours, I was 
thrice cut off, by rainstorms, from all view 
of the world beneath. Not a tree could I 
find on that mountain-top, nor any place of 
shelter from the blast and the rain, except 
when crouching beside the mound of rock 
at its summit, which in that country they call 
a "man." Not a living creature was visible, 
save now and then a lonely sheep, who stared 
at me for a moment and then scurried away. 
But when the skies cleared and the cloudy 
squadrons of the storm went careering over 
Helvellyn, I looked down into no less than 
fifteen valleys, beautifully colored by the 
foliage and the patches of cultivated land, each 
vale being sparsely fringed with little gray 
stone dwellings that seemed no more than 
card-houses, in those appalling depths. You 
think of Wordsworth, in such a place as that, 
— if you know his poetry. You cannot choose 
but think of him. 

Who comes not hither ne'er shall know 
How beautiful the world below. 



318 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Yet somehow it happened that whenever 
friends joined in those rambles the great poet 
was sure to dawn upon us in a comic way. 
When we were resting on the bridge at the 
foot of Brothers Water, which is a little lake, 
scarcely more than a mountain tarn, lying 
between Ullswater and the Kirkstone Pass, 
some one recalled that Wordsworth had once 
rested there and written a poem about it. 
We were not all as devout admirers of the 
bard as I am, and certainly it is not every 
one of the great author's compositions that a 
lover of his genius would wish to hear quoted, 
under such circumstances. The Brothers 
Water poem is the one that begins "The cock 
is crowing, the stream is flowing," and I do 
not think that its insipidity is much relieved 
by its happy picture of the grazing cattle, 
"forty feeding like one." Henry Irving, not 
given to enthusiasm about Wordsworth, 
heard a recital of some of those lines with 
undisguised merriment, and made and spoke a 
capital travesty of them. It is significant to 
remember, with reference to the inequality of 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 319 

Wordsworth, that on the day before he wrote 
"The cock is crowing," and at a place but a 
short distance from the Brothers Water bridge, 
he had written that peerless lyric about the 
daffodils, — "I wandered lonely as a cloud." 
Gowbarrow Park is the scene of that poem, — a 
place of ferns and hawthorns, notable for 
containing Lyulph's Tower, a romantic, ivy- 
clad lodge, owned by the Duke of Norfolk, and 
Aira Force, a waterfall much finer than 
Lodore. Upon the lake shore in Gowbarrow 
Park you can still see the daffodils as Words- 
worth saw them, a golden host, "glittering and 
dancing in the breeze." 

"I saw Wordsworth often when I was a 
child," said Frank Marshall, who had joined us 
at Penrith; "he used to come to my father's 
house, Patterdale Hall, and once I was sent to 
the garden, by Mrs. Wordsworth, to call him to 
supper. He was musing there, I suppose. He 
had a long, horse-like face. I don't think I liked 
him. I said, 'Your wife wants you.' He 
looked down at me and he answered, 'My 
boy, you should say Mrs. Wordsworth, and 



320 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

not "your wife." ' I looked up at him and I 
replied, 'She is your wife, isn't she?' Where- 
upon he said no more. I don't think he liked 
me either." We were going up Kirkstone 
Pass when Marshall told this story, — which 
seemed to bring the pensive poet plainly before 
us. An hour later, at the top of the pass, 
while waiting in the old inn called the 
Traveller's Rest, which incorrectly proclaims 
itself the highest inhabited house in England, 
I spoke with a weather-beaten hostler, not 
wholly unfamiliar with the medicinal virtue of 
ardent spirits, and asked for his opinion of 
the great lake poet. "Well," he said, "people 
are always talking about Wordsworth, but I 
don't see much in it. I've read it, but I don't 
care for it. It's dry stuff — it don't chime." 
Truly there are all sorts of views, just as there 
are all sorts of persons. (The Traveller's 
Rest is 1481 feet above the sea-level, whereas 
the inn called The Cat and Fiddle, — a corrup- 
tion of Caton le Fidele, governor of Calais, 
— on Axe Edge, near Buxton, is 1700 feet 
above the level of the sea.) 




rr> gi, ~ * ~ 



; ? = 



» -2 



*» ."S O Co •* 

&i £; r 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 321 

Mementos of Wordsworth are frequently 
encountered by the traveller among these 
lakes and fells. One of them, situated at 
the foot of Place Fell, is a rustic cottage that 
the poet once selected for his residence: it was 
purchased for him by Lord Lonsdale, as a 
partial indemnity for losses, caused by an 
ancestor of his, to Wordsworth's father. The 
poet liked the place, but he never lived there. 
The house somewhat resembles the Shakespeare 
cottage at Stratford, — the living-room being 
floored with stone slabs, irregular in size and 
shape and mostly broken by hard use. In a 
corner of the kitchen stands a fine carved oak 
cupboard, dark with age, inscribed with the 
date of the Merry Monarch, 1660. 

What were the sights of those sweet days 
that linger still, and will always linger, in 
my remembrance? A ramble in the park of 
Patterdale Hall (the old name of the estate 
is Halsteads), which is full of American trees; 
a golden morning in Dovedale, with Irving, 
much like Jaques, reclined upon a shaded rock, 
half-way up the mountain, musing and moral- 



322 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

izing in his sweet, kind way, beside the brawl- 
ing stream; the first prospect of Windermere, 
from above Ambleside, — a vision of heaven 
upon earth; the drive by Rydal Water, which 
has all the loveliness of celestial pictures seen 
in dreams; the glimpse of stately Rydal Hall 
and of the sequestered Rydal Mount, where 
Wordsworth so long lived and where he died; 
the Wishing Gate, where one of us, I know, 
wished in his heart that he could be young 
again and be wiser than to waste his youth in 
self-willed folly; the restful hours of observa- 
tion and thought at delicious Grasmere, where 
we stood in silence at Wordsworth's grave and 
heard the murmur of Rotha singing at his 
feet; the lovely drive past Matterdale, across 
the moorlands, with only clouds and rooks for 
our chance companions, and mountains for 
sentinels along our way; the ramble through 
Keswick, all golden and glowing in the after- 
noon sun, till we stood by Crosthwaite church 
and read the words of commemoration upon 
the tomb of Robert Southey; the glorious cir- 
cuit of Derwent, — surely the loveliest sheet of 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 323 

water in England; the descent into the vale 
of Keswick, with sunset on the rippling crystal 
of the lake and the perfume of countless wild 
roses on the evening wind. Those things, and 
the midnight talk about those things, — Irving, 
so tranquil, so gentle, so full of keen and sweet 
appreciation of them, — Bendall, so bright and 
thoughtful, — Marshall, so quaint and jolly, and 
so full of knowledge equally of nature and of 
books! — can never be forgotten. In one heart 
they are cherished forever. 

Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere church- 
yard, close by the wall, on the bank of the 
little river Rotha. "Sing him thy best," said 
Matthew Arnold, in his lovely dirge for the 
great poet — 

Sing him thy best! for few or none 
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone. 

In the same grave with Wordsworth sleeps 
his devoted wife. Beside them rest the poet's 
no less devoted sister Dorothy, who died at 
Rydal Mount in 1855, aged 83, and his 
daughter, Dora, together with her husband 



324 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Edward Quillinan, of whom Arnold wrote so 
tenderly : 

Alive, we would have changed his lot, 
We would not change it now. 

On the low gravestone that marks the 
sepulchre of Wordsworth are written these 
words: "William Wordsworth, 1850. Mary 
Wordsworth, 1859." In the neighboring 
church a mural tablet presents this inscription: 

To the memory of William Wordsworth. A true 
poet and philosopher, who by the special gift and calling 
of Almighty God, whether he discoursed on man or na- 
ture, failed not to lift up the heart to holy things, tired 
not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple, 
and so in perilous times was raised up to be a chief 
minister, not only of noblest poetry, but of high and 
sacred truth. The memorial is raised here by his 
friends and neighbours, in testimony of respect, affec- 
tion, and gratitude. Anno mdcccli. 

A few steps from Wordsworth's grave will 
bring you to the marble cross that marks the 
resting-place of Hartley Coleridge, son of 
the great author of "The Ancient Mariner," 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 325 

himself a poet of rare sensibility; and close by 
is a touching memorial to the gifted man who 
inspired Matthew Arnold's poems of "The 
Scholar-Gipsy" and "Thyrsis." This is a slab 
laid upon his mother's grave, at the foot of 
her tombstone, inscribed with these words: 

In memory of Arthur Hugh Clough, some time Fel- 
low of Oriel College, Oxford, the beloved son of James 
Butler and Anne Clough. This remembrance in his 
own country is placed on his mother's grave by those 
to whom life was made happy by his presence and his 
love. He is buried in the Swiss cemetery at Florence, 
where he died, November 13, 1861, aged 42. 

"So, dearest, now thy brows are cold 
I see thee what thou art and know 
Thy likeness to the wise below, 
Thy kindred with the great of old." 

Southey rests in Crosthwaite churchyard, 
about half a mile north of Keswick, where he 
died. They show you Greta Hall, a fine 
mansion, on a little hill, enclosed in tall trees, 
which for forty years, ending in 1843, was 
the poet's home. In the church is a marble 



326 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

figure of Southey, recumbent on a large stone 
sarcophagus. His grave, in the churchyard, is 
marked by a low flat tomb, on the end of which 
appears an inscription commemorative of a 
servant, Betty Thompson, who had lived fifty 
years in his family and is buried near him. 
There was a pretty scene at this grave. When 
I came to it Irving was already there, and was 
speaking to a little girl who had guided him to 
the spot. "If any one were to give you a 
shilling, my dear," he said, "what would you 
do with it?" The child was confused and she 
murmured softly, "I don't know, sir." "Well," 
he continued, "if any one were to give you 
two shillings, what would you do?" She said 
she would save it. "But what if it were three 
shillings?" he asked, and each time he spoke 
he dropped a silver coin into her hand, till he 
must have given her more than a dozen of 
them. "Four — five — six — seven — what would 
you do with the money?" "I would give it to 
my mother, sir," she answered at last, her little 
face all smiles, gazing up at the stately, 
sombre stranger, whose noble countenance 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 327 

never looked more radiant than it did then, 
with gentle kindness and pleasure. It is a 
trifle to mention, but it was touching in its 
simplicity; and that attentive group, around 
the grave of Southey, in the blaze of the 
golden sun of a July afternoon, with Skiddaw 
looming vast and majestic over all, will linger 
with me as long as anything lovely and of 
good report is treasured in my memory. Long 
after we had left the place I chanced to speak 
of its peculiar interest. "The most interesting 
thing I saw there," said Irving, "was that 
sweet child." I do not think the great actor 
was ever much impressed with the beauties of 
those writers who are constantly, and incor- 
rectly, called "the lake poets." 

Another picture glimmers across my dream, 
— a picture of peace and happiness which shall 
close this rambling reminiscence of peaceful 
days. We had driven up the pass between 
Glencoin and Gowbarrow, and had reached 
Matterdale, on our way toward Troutbeck 
station, — not the beautiful Windermere Trout- 
beck, but the less notable one. The road is 



328 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

lonely, but at Matterdale the traveller sees a 
few houses, and there our gaze was attracted 
by a gray church nestled in a hollow of the 
hillside. It stands sequestered, with bright 
greensward around it and a few trees. A faint 
sound of organ music floated from this sacred 
building and seemed to deepen the hush of 
the summer wind and shed a holier calm upon 
the lovely solitude. We left the carriage and 
silently entered the church. A youth and a 
maiden, apparently lovers, were sitting at the 
organ, — the youth playing and the girl listen- 
ing, and looking with tender trust and innocent 
affection into his face. He recognized our 
presence with a kindly nod, but went on with 
the music. I do not think she saw us. The 
place was full of soft, warm light, streaming 
through the stained glass of Gothic windows, 
and was fragrant with perfume floating from 
the hay-fields and the dew-drenched roses of 
many a neighboring hedge. Not a word was 
spoken, and after a few moments we departed, 
as silently as we had come. Those lovers 
will never know what eyes looked upon them 




ROBERT SOUTHEY 

1774-1843 



He was all pureness and his outward part 
But represents the picture of Ms heart. 

cow LEV. 



HAUNTS OF WORDSWORTH 329 

that day, what hearts were comforted with the 
sight of their happiness, or how a careworn 
man, three thousand miles away, fanning upon 
his hearthstone the dying embers of hope, now 
thinks of them with tender sympathy, and 
murmurs a blessing on the gracious scene which 
their presence so much endeared. 



XXI. 

GRAY AND ARNOLD. 

The poet Emerson's injunction, "Set not 
thy foot on graves," is wise and right, and 
being in merry England in the summer time 
it certainly is your own fault if you do not 
fulfil the rest of the philosophical command- 
ment, and "Hear what wine and roses say." 
Yet the history of England is largely written 
in her ancient churches and crumbling ruins, 
and the pilgrim to historic and literary shrines 
in that country will find it difficult to avoid 
setting his foot on graves. It is possible there, 
as elsewhere, to live entirely in the present; 
but to certain temperaments and in certain 
moods the temptation is irresistible to live 
largely in the past. One of the most sacred 
spots in England is the churchyard of Stoke- 
Pogis. At one time it seemed likely that 

330 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 331 

Stoke Park would pass into the possession 
of a sporting club, and be turned into a race- 
course and kennel. Fate was kind, however, 
and averted the final disaster. Only a few 
changes are to be noted in that part of the 
park which, to the reverent pilgrim, must 
always be dear. The churchyard has been 
extended in front, and a solid wall of flint, 
pierced with a lych-gate, richly carved, has 
replaced the plain fence, with simple turnstile, 
that formerly enclosed that rural cemetery. 
The additional land was given by a new 
proprietor of Stoke Park, who wished that 
his tomb might be made in it; and this has 
been built, beneath a large tree, not far from 
the entrance. The avenue from the gate to 
the church has been widened, and it is fringed 
with thin lines of twisted stone; and where 
once stood only two or three rose-trees there 
are now sixty-two, — set in lines on either side 
of the path. But the older part of the grave- 
yard remains unchanged. The yew-trees cast 
their dense shade, as of old. The quaint porch 
of the sacred building has not suffered under 



332 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

the hand of restoration, the ancient wooden 
memorials of the dead continue to moulder 
above their ashes, and still the abundant ivy 
gleams and trembles in the sunshine and in 
the summer wind that plays so sweetly over 
the spired tower and dusky walls of this lovely 
temple. 

It would still be lovely, even if it were 
not associated with the immortal Elegy. I 
stood for a long time beside the tomb of 
the noble and tender poet and looked with 
deep emotion on the surrounding scene of 
pensive, dream-like beauty, — the great elms, 
so dense of foliage, so stately and graceful; 
the fields of deep, waving grass, golden with 
buttercups and white with daisies; the many 
unmarked mounds; the many mouldering tomb- 
stones; the rooks sailing and cawing around 
the tree-tops; and the blue sky flecked with 
floating fleece. Within the church nothing has 
been changed. The memorial window to Gray, 
for which contributions have been taken dur- 
ing several years, had not yet been placed. As 
I cast a farewell look at Gray's tomb, on turn- 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 333 

ing to leave the churchyard, it rejoiced my 
heart to see that two American girls, who 
had then come in, were placing fresh flowers 
over the poet's dust. He has been buried more 
than a hundred years, but his memory is as 
bright as the ivy on the tower within whose 
shadow he sleeps, and as fragrant as the roses 
that bloom at its base. 

Many Americans visit Stoke-Pogis church- 
yard, and no visitor to the Old World who 
knows how to value what is best in its treasures 
will omit that act of reverence. The journey 
is easy. A brief run by railway from Pad- 
dington takes you to Slough, which is near to 
Windsor, and thence it is a charming drive, 
or a still more charming walk, mostly through 
green, embowered lanes, to the "ivy-mantled 
tower," the "yew-tree's shade," and the simple 
tomb of Gray. What a gap there would be 
in the poetry of our language if the "Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard" were absent from 
it! By that sublime and tender reverie upon 
the most solemn of all subjects that can 
engage the attention of the human mind 



334 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Thomas Gray became one of the chief bene- 
factors of his race. Those lines have been 
murmured by the lips of sorrowing affection 
beside many a shrine of buried love and hope, 
in many a churchyard, all round the world. 
The sick have remembered them with com- 
fort. The great soldier, going into battle, 
has said them for his solace and cheer. The 
dying statesman, closing his weary eyes upon 
this empty world, has spoken them with his 
last faltering accents, and fallen asleep with 
their heavenly music in his brain. Well 
may we pause and ponder at the grave 
of that divine poet! Every noble mind is 
made nobler, every good heart is made better, 
for the experience of such a pilgrimage. In 
such places as these pride is rebuked, vanity 
is dispelled, and the revolt of the passionate 
human heart is humbled into meekness and 
submission. 

There is a place kindred with Stoke-Pogis 
churchyard, a place destined to become as 
famous and as dear to the heart of the reverent 
pilgrim in the footsteps of genius and pure 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 335 

renown. On a Sunday afternoon I sat for a 
long time beside the grave of Matthew Arnold. 
It is in a churchyard at Laleham, in Surrey, 
where he was born. The day was chill, sombre, 
and, except for an occasional twitter of birds 
and the melancholy cawing of distant rooks, 
soundless and sadly calm. So dark a sky might 
mean November rather than June, but it fitted 
well with the scene and with the pensive 
thoughts and feelings of the hour. Laleham is 
a village on the south bank of the Thames, 
about thirty miles from London and nearly 
midway between Staines and Chertsey. It 
consists of a few devious lanes and a cluster 
of houses, shaded by large trees and every- 
where made beautiful by flowers, and it is one 
of those fortunate places to which access can- 
not be obtained by railway. There is a manor- 
house in the centre of it, secluded in a walled 
garden, fronting the square immediately oppo- 
site to the village church. The other houses 
are mostly cottages, made of red brick and 
roofed with red tiles. Ivy flourishes, and many 
of the cottages are overrun by climbing 



336 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

roses. Roman relics are found in the neigh- 
borhood, a camp near the ford, and other 
indications of the military activity of Caesar. 
The church, All Saints', is of great antiquity. 
It has been, in part, restored, but its venerable 
aspect is not impaired. The large, low tower 
is of brick, and this and the church walls are 
thickly covered with glistening ivy. A double- 
peaked roof of red tiles, sunken here and 
there, contributes to the picturesque beauty of 
the building, and its charm is further height- 
ened by the contiguity of trees, in which the 
old church seems to nestle. Within there are 
low, massive pillars and plain, symmetrical 
arches, — the remains of Norman architecture. 
Great rafters of dark oak augment, in that 
quaint structure, the air of solidity and of 
an age at once venerable and romantic, while 
a bold, spirited, beautiful painting of Christ 
and Peter upon the sea imparts to it an addi- 
tional sentiment of sanctity and solemn pomp. 
That remarkable work is by George Henry 
Harlow, and it is placed back of the altar, 
where once there would have been, in the 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 337 

Gothic days, a stained window. The explorer 
does not often come upon such a gem of a 
church, even in England, — so rich in remains 
of the old Catholic zeal and devotion, remains 
now mostly converted to the use of Protestant 
worship. 

The churchyard of All Saints' is worthy of 
the church, — a little enclosure, irregular in 
shape, surface, shrubbery, and tombstones, bor- 
dered on two sides by the village square and 
on one by a farmyard, and shaded by many 
trees, some of them yews, and some of great 
size and age. Almost every house that is 
visible near by is bowered by trees and 
adorned with flowers. No person was any- 
where to be seen, and it was only after inquiry 
at various dwellings that the sexton's abode 
could be discovered and access to the church 
obtained. The poet's grave is not within the 
church, but in a secluded spot at the side 
of it, a little removed from the highway, and 
screened from immediate view by an ancient, 
dusky yew-tree. I readily found it, perceiving 
a large wreath of roses and a bunch of white 



338 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

flowers that were lying upon it, — recent offer- 
ings of tender remembrance and sorrowing 
love, but already beginning to wither. A 
small square of turf, bordered with white 
marble, covers the vaulted tomb of the poet 
and of three of his children. At the head are 
three crosses of white marble, alike in shape 
and equal in size, except that the first is set 
upon a pedestal a little lower than those of 
the others. On the first cross is written: 

Basil Francis Arnold, youngest child 
of Matthew and Frances Lucy Arnold. 
Born August 19, 1866. Died January 
4, 1868. "Suffer little children to come 
unto me." 

On the second: Thomas Arnold, eldest 
child of Matthew and Frances Lucy 
Arnold. Born July 6, 1852. Died 
November 23, 1868. "Awake, thou, 
Lute and Harp! I will awake right 
early." 

On the third: Trevenen William 
Arnold, second child of Matthew and 
Frances Lucy Arnold. Born October 
15,1853. Died February 16, 1872. "In 
the morning it is green and groweth up." 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 339 

Near by are other tombstones, bearing the 
name of Arnold, — the dates inscribed on them 
referring to about the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century. These mark the resting-place 
of some of the poet's kindred. His father, Dr. 
Arnold, of Rugby, rests in Rugby chapel, — 
that noble father, that true friend and servant 
of humanity, of whom the son wrote those 
words of imperishable nobility and meaning, 
"Thou, my father, wouldst not be saved alone." 
Matthew Arnold is buried in the same grave 
with his eldest son, and side by side with his 
little children. He who was himself as a little 
child, in his innocence, goodness, and truth, — 
where else and how else could he so fitly rest? 
"Awake, thou, Lute and Harp! I will awake 
right early." 

Every man will have his own thoughts in 
such a place as this, will reflect upon his own 
afflictions, and, from knowledge of the manner 
and spirit in which kindred griefs have been 
borne by the great heart of intellect and 
genius, will seek to gather strength and 
patience to endure them well. Matthew 



340 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Arnold taught many lessons of great value to 
those persons who are able to think. He did 
not believe that happiness is the destiny of 
the human race on earth, or that there is a 
visible ground for assuming that happiness, 
in our mortal condition, is one of the inherent 
rights of humanity. He did not think that this 
world is made an abode of delight by the mere 
jocular affirmation that everything in it is 
well and lovely. But his message, delivered in 
poetic strains that will endure as long as our 
language exists, is the message, not of gloom 
and despair, but of spiritual purity and sweet 
and gentle patience. The man who heeds 
Matthew Arnold's teaching will put no trust 
in creeds and superstitions, will place no 
reliance upon the transient structures of 
theology, will take no guidance from the ani- 
mal and unthinking multitude, but will "keep 
the whiteness of his soul," will be simple, 
unselfish, and sweet, will live for the spirit, 
and in that spirit, pure, tender, fearless, 
strong to bear and patient to suffer, will find 
composure to meet the inevitable disasters of 



GRAY AND ARNOLD 341 

life and the awful mystery of death. Such 
was the burden of my thought, sitting there, 
in the gloaming, beside the lifeless dust of him 
whose hand had once, with kindly greeting, 
been clasped in mine: and such will be the 
thought of many and many a pilgrim who 
will stand in that sacred place, on many a 
summer evening of the long future, — 

While the stars come out and the night wind 

Brings, up the stream, 

Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 

A plain headstone, of white marble, has 
been placed at Arnold's grave, bearing the 
following inscription : — 

Matthew Arnold, eldest son of the late Thomas 
Arnold, D.D., Head Master of Rugby School. Born 
December 24, 1822. Died April 15, 1888. "There is 
sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful glad- 
ness for such as are true-hearted." 

The "Letters of Matthew Arnold," pub- 
lished in 1895, contain touching allusions to 
Laleham churchyard. At Harrow, February 



342 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

27, 1869, the poet wrote: "It is a wonderfully 
clear, bright day, with a cold wind, so I went 
to a field on the top of the hill, whence I can 
see the clump of Botleys and the misty line 
of the Thames, where Tommy lies at the foot 
of them. I often go for this view on a clear 
day." 

At London, August 2, 1869, he wrote: "On 
Saturday Flu and I went together to Laleham. 
It was exactly a year since we had driven 
there with darling Tommy and the other two 
boys, to see Basil's grave; he enjoyed the 
drive, and Laleham, and the river, and Matt 
Buckland's garden, and often talked of them 
afterwards. And now we went to see his 
grave, poor darling. The two graves are a 
perfect garden, and are evidently the sight 
of the churchyard, where there is nothing else 
like them; a path has been trodden over the 
grass to them, by people coming and going. 
It was a soft, mild air, and we sat a long- 
time by the graves." 



XXII. 

THROUGH SURREY AND KENT. 

It is early morning in London. The rain 
has been falling all night, and in the gray 
of the dawn it continues to fall, — not now 
in showers, but intermittently and in a cold 
drizzle. The sky is dark and sullen, and 
through the humid, misty air the towers and 
spires of the majestic city loom shadowlike, 
fantastic, and strange. Pools of water stand 
here and there in the streaming, slippery 
streets, which are almost devoid equally of 
vehicles and pedestrians. The shopkeepers of 
Kensington have not yet awakened, and as 
my cab rolls through the solitary highways I 
see that only in a few places have the shut- 
ters been taken from the windows. Victoria 
is presently reached, where, at this early hour, 
only a few persons are astir, so that the con- 

343 



344 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

fusion and clamor of British travel have not 
yet begun. Soon the train rumbles out of the 
station. The skies begin to brighten as it crosses 
the Thames, while, gently ruffled by the morning 
breeze, the broad expanse of the river shows 
like a sheet of wrinkled steel. At first the run 
is among long rows of houses, all alike, 
— the monotonous suburban dwellings of towns 
such as Wandsworth and Clapham, with their 
melancholy little gardens, dripping with recent 
rain, in which marigolds are beginning to 
bloom, and great, heavy sunflowers hang their 
disconsolate heads. Nothing here seems joyous 
except the grass, but this has profited by the 
pertinacious rain and is richer and greener 
than ever. Presently the gardens and dwell- 
ings grow more opulent. The wind rises with 
the advance of day, and soon the dense foliage 
about the hill and vale of Heme stirs and 
rustles in the gladness of its careless life. Now 
begins the gentle pageant of English rural 
scenery — that blending of soft color and 
quaint, delicate object. Every traveller will 
remember, and will rejoice to remember, the 



THROUGH SURREY AND KENT 345 

elements of that delicious picture — the open, 
far-reaching stretches of pasture, level, green, 
and fragrant; the beds of many-colored flowers, 
flashing on brilliant lawns; the fleecy sheep, 
the sleek horses, and the comely cattle, grouped 
or scattered in the fields, some feeding, some 
ruminant, some in motion, and some asleep; 
the deep, lush grass and clover; the nurseries 
of fruit-trees; the glimpses of gray church- 
towers and of shining streams; and the fre- 
quent flights of rooks and frolicsome starlings 
that seem at times almost to make a darkness 
in the air. 

Soon the opulent, aristocratic facade of 
ancient Dulwich College, — at once the memorial 
and the sepulchre of Shakespeare's associate, 
Edward Alley ne, — smiles upon the traveller 
and witches him with thoughts of a memorable 
past. Leaving Dulwich the train speeds 
through a long tunnel, and in a few moments, 
dashing across the plain of Penge, I per- 
ceive the lofty tower and Olympian fabric of 
the Crystal Palace shining on the hills of 
Sydenham. This is a fertile, rolling country, 



346 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

much diversified with hill and valley. All 
around the banks are scarlet with innumer- 
able standards of the gorgeous poppy and 
golden with flowers of the colt's-foot, and 
many red-roofed farm-houses are momentarily 
visible in the green depths of lofty groves. 
The way lies through hop-fields now, and the 
air is delicious with the zestful perfume of 
their blossoms. Beds of wild fern and of 
many kinds of underwoods are traversed, and 
in fields that are divided by hedges of lovely 
hawthorn I see sheaves of yellow grain. 
Quaint little villages are passed. The door- 
yards are gay with marigolds. There are 
broad patches of clover in copious, fragrant 
bloom, and on the distant horizon the green 
hills, crowned with dark groves, loom gloomily 
under straggling clouds. The wind blows chill, 
the sky takes on a cold, silvery hue, and innu- 
merable starlings, flying low, look like black 
dots under the dome of heaven. The speed is 
great, and the engine leaves long trails of thick, 
smoky vapor that melts through the trees and 
hedges or seems to sink into the ground. At 



THROUGH SURREY AND KENT 347 

Sole a lovely rural region is opened and the sky 
begins to smile. Yonder on the hillside a stark 
church-tower shows its grim parapet. In the 
opposite quarter there are hills, thick-wooded or 
capped with sheaves of the harvest. This scene 
is one of exceptionally picturesque beauty, — the 
peace of deep vales in which boughs wave, streams 
murmur, and stately rooks are seeking their 
food; the peace of old red or gray farm-houses 
veiled with ivy and nestled among flowers. 
The banks of the Medway are near, and beyond 
the crystal bosom of that beautiful river rises 
the black ruin of Rochester Castle, flecked with 
lichen and haunted by hosts of doves, and near 
it the pinnacled tower of Rochester Cathedral, 
romantic in itself, but made more romantic 
by the art of the great genius who loved it 
well. Here Dickens laid the scene of his 
ingenious story of "Edwin Drood," and not 
far from this spot stands the old, lonely house 
of Gadshill in which he died. The little town 
of Rochester is all astir. The wet, red roofs 
of its cosey dwellings glisten in the welcome 
though transient sunshine, and on some of 



348 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

those houses great mantles of green ivy sway 
gently in the rising wind. The river is full 
of shipping, — small craft and steamboats, — 
and the gaze of the pilgrim dwells delighted 
on brown sails, tapering spars, gay smoke- 
stacks, and the busy little boats that seem 
never at rest. Not many views in England 
possess such animation as pervades the spec- 
tacle of the valley of the Medway at Rochester, 
and the lover of Dickens may well look upon 
it with affection and leave it with regret. 

The train dashes through a ravine of chalk- 
stone now and I have a fine prospect of martial 
Chatham, which is built in a valley, but extends 
up the side of the adjacent eastward hill, 
and through one of its long highways my 
glance follows the plunging flight of a large 
flock of frightened sheep. At New-Brompton 
there are many small gray houses, and there 
is a profusion of red and yellow flowers. A 
wide reach of glistening water is presently seen, 
toward the east, — which is the Medway, near- 
ing the sea. Harvest fields extend almost to 
its verge, and the country is level for miles, 



THROUGH SURREY AND KENT 349 

— a marsh-land intersected by channels and 
pools. Presently I come again into hop- 
fields, and recognize the rich, blooming land 
of Kent. At Newington there are gloomier 
skies and dashes of sudden rain, but the 
grass is thickly strewn with sumptuous white 
daisies, and the prospect of a noble antique 
church, with plenteous moss and lichen 
on its triple-gabled roof and with its square 
tower bosomed in foliage, would make any 
gazer forget the weather and cast all dis- 
comfort to the winds. Speeding past Sitting- 
bourne I note the breezy activity of that 
thrifty place, the newly built manufactories, 
the tall, smoking chimneys, the fine mill, and 
the miller's still finer dwelling — so close to the 
brink of his great pond that not the building 
only but the innumerable flowers that grow 
around it are reflected in the broad, gleaming 
pool. This sweet picture passes in an instant, 
and then, under rifts of blue in a sky of silver, 
come many drenched sheaves of an injured 
harvest. There is a vision of roads that are 
full of mire; of glowing hop-fields; of hay- 



350 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

stacks and thatched cottages; of distant spires 
peeping out among the trees; of windmills on 
the hill-tops; of harvesters gathering grain; and 
of happy children who wave a greeting from 
poppy-spangled fields. Faversham now, and 
across the green levels, far away, rise the 
brown sails of barges and of other little ves- 
sels that ply the neighboring sea. Near at 
hand the green hedges are full of white and 
red and yellow flowers, and many sheep are 
nibbling in the pastures or gazing with a 
wooden stare at the flying train. The sky 
continually changes, and here it is a dome 
of dark-gray and silver, across which, with 
astonishing speed, thin fleeces of rain-cloud 
career on the stormy wind. I have come 
into a beautiful valley, green on all sides 
and diversified with windmills, cottages, little 
gray churches, massive cones of golden hay, 
clumps of larch, lines of delicate silver birch, 
and large masses of fragrant hops, — the thick 
vines of which hang so near that I can almost 
clutch their pendant blossoms as I pass. A 
veil of dim sunshine is cast over this verdurous 



THROUGH SURREY AND KENT 351 

scene, and as the vale broadens you can per- 
ceive a dazzling variety of objects — manor- 
house and cottage, grove and plain, fields that 
are brown and fields that are yellow, thin white 
roads that wind away over hill-tops and are 
lost in the distance, a bright and rapid stream 
that flashes through the meadow, and, grandly 
crowning the pageant and consecrating its 
beauty, the stately, splendid towers of Canter- 
bury Cathedral. There they stand, majestic 
and glorious, with centuries of history upon 
their hallowed battlements, serene, predominant, 
and changeless amid the changes of a transitory 
world. Nothing of architectural creation can 
excel in charm the spiritual loveliness of that 
cathedral. York and St. Paul's and Lincoln 
surpass it in massive grandeur; Gloucester 
surpasses it in romance; Durham is more 
rugged and more austerely splendid; West- 
minster is more rich with poetic association and 
with ecclesiastical ornament; Ely possesses a 
greater variety of blended architectural styles 
and of eccentric character; but, travel where 
you may, you never will behold a church more 



352 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

completely radiant with the investiture of 
sublimity. It won my heart years ago, and no 
one of its magnificent rivals has ever allured 
me from its shrine. 

There is no pause. Berkesbourne flashes by 
— its velvet plains slumbering under spacious 
elms, and its fields of silken oat-grass blazing 
with poppies. All about Adisham the thatched 
cottages and the sheep in the pastures make 
a pretty picture of smiling content. The har- 
vest is partly mown and partly erect. Birds 
abound, and there are many patches of wood- 
land near by, and many vacant plains. The 
country is hilly now, and on the gentle acclivities, 
here and there, is seen a manor-house, quaint 
with gables and latticed casements and draped 
with ivy. In the foreground are fields of clover, 
and, looking beyond those, your gaze falls upon 
wooded vales in which the dark sheen of the 
copper-beach shows boldly against the green 
of the elms. A little graveyard gleams for a 
moment on the hillside, — in mute reminder that 
Death also has a part in these scenes of fertile 
beauty, — and then the train flits through the 



THROUGH SURREY AND KENT 353 

dark tunnel and comes slowly to a pause beneath 
the noble cliffs of Dover. The sombre castle 
frowns upon its crag. The great hillsides are 
solitary in the bleak light. The little cabin and 
the signal-standard keep their lonely vigil on 
the wind-beaten summit of the Shakespeare 
Cliff. The massive stone pier, like a giant's 
arm, stretches into the sea, and braves its power 
and defies its wrath; and on the vacant, desolate 
beach the endless surges still murmur their 
mysterious, everlasting dirge — the requiem of 
broken vows, and blighted hope, and all the 
futile ambitions, passions, and sorrows of 
mankind. 



XXIII. 

A FRENCH VIGNETTE. 

The sea was wild when the steamer on which 
I had embarked sprang into its embrace, the 
sky was full of white and tawny clouds, rifted 
by streaks of blue, and the long waves rolled 
up in purple masses, crested with plumes of 
silver. Many sails were visible, in the distant 
horizon, and the air was so clear that in mid- 
channel I could discern, in successive glances, 
the high cliffs of Albion and the low-lying, 
sandy coast of France. It was an hour of 
memory and thought, of dreams and visions, 
and I forgot the life around me, — the sailors, 
at their tasks, the chatter of travellers, the 
clank of the engines, the swirl and strife of 
the waters and the winds, — to muse on old 
imperial battles that once incarnadined these 
seas, and to gaze on the ghostly galleons of 

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A FRENCH VIGNETTE 355 

the Spanish Armada, the pennons of the great 
admirals of Spain and France and Holland 
and England, the stately ships of Raleigh and 
Drake, of Collingwood and Rodney and Nel- 
son, and, proudly streaming on the blast, that 
flag of Britannia which is the austere emblem 
of human freedom. 

The landing was soon made, and I was 
speeding through fields of France, rich with 
color and generous with abundance of golden 
crops. Now and then little hamlets were 
visible, each composed of thatched cottages 
clustered around a tiny church. Sheaves of 
wheat were seen, stacked in piles in the 
meadows. Rows of tall, lithe Lombardy 
poplar flashed by, and rows of the tremulous, 
silver-leaf maple. Sometimes I saw rich bits 
of garden, gorgeous with geraniums and with 
many wild-flowers, which the French gardeners 
sedulously cultivate and encourage. In some 
fields the reapers were at work; in others 
women were guiding the plough; in others 
sleek cattle and shaggy sheep were couched 
in repose or cropping the herbage. Gaunt 



356 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

windmills appeared, stretching forth their arms, 
on the distant hills. All the land is cultivated, 
and there, as in England, scarlet poppies 
brighten the green, while cosey hedgerows make 
the landscape comfortable to the fancy as 
well as pretty to the eye. 

In the evening I was driving in the streets 
of Paris and thinking of the Arabian Nights. 
Nobody can know, without seeing them, how 
imperial the great features of the French 
capital are. My first morning there was a 
Sunday, and it was made beautiful by sun- 
shine, singing of birds, strains of music from 
passing bands, and many sights and sounds 
which bespoke the cheerfulness of the people. 
I went that day to a fete in the Bois de Vin- 
cennes, where from noon till midnight a great 
throng took its pleasure, in an orderly, simple, 
child-like manner, delightful to observe, and 
where I saw a "picture in little" of the manners 
of the French. It was a peculiar pleasure 
while in Paris to rise at an early hour and 
stroll through the markets of St. Honore, in 
which flowers have an equal place with more 



A FRENCH VIGNETTE 357 

substantial necessities of life, and where order 
and neatness are especially predominant. It 
was impressive, also, to walk in the gardens of 
the Tuileries, in those lonely morning hours, 
and to muse over the downfall of the dynasty 
of Napoleon. Little trace remained of the rav- 
ages of the Commune. The Arc de Triomphe 
stands, in solemn majesty; the Column Ven- 
dome towers; the golden figure seems still in 
act of flight upon the top of the Column of 
the Bastille. I saw, in the church of Notre 
Dame, the garments, stained with blood and 
riddled by bullets, that were worn by the 
Archbishop of Paris, when he was murdered 
by the friends of Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
ternity, and I saw, with admiration, a panorama 
of the siege of Paris, by F. Phillipoteaux, a 
marvel of faithful detail, spirited composition, 
and the action and suffering of war, but those 
were all the tokens that I chanced to see of 
the evil days of France. 

The most interesting sights of Paris, to a 
stranger, are objects associated with its older 
history. Every visitor repairs to Les Invalides 



858 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

to see the tomb of Napoleon. That structure 
would inspire awe, even if it were not asso- 
ciated with that glittering name and terrible 
memory. The gloom of the crypt in which 
it is sunk, the sepulchral character of the 
mysterious, emblematic figures that surround 
it, the grandeur of the dome that rises over 
it, and its own vast size and deathly shape, — 
all those characteristics unite to make it an 
impressive object, apart from the solemn sense 
that in the great, red-sandstone coffin rests, 
after the stormiest of lives, the ashes of the 
most vital man of action who has lived in 
modern times. Deeply impressive also are the 
tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau, in the crypt 
under the Pantheon. No device more apposite 
and significant could have been adopted than 
that which startles you in the front of Rous- 
seau's tomb. The door stands ajar, and out 
of it issues an arm and hand, in marble, grasp- 
ing a torch. It was almost as if the dead 
had spoken with a living voice, to see that 
fateful symbol of a power of thought and 
passion that never can die. There is a fine 



A FRENCH VIGNETTE 859 

statue of Voltaire in the vault that holds his 
tomb. Those mausoleums are commemorative. 
The body of Voltaire was destroyed with quick- 
lime, when laid in the grave, at the Abbey of 
Celleries, so that it might not be cast out of 
consecrated ground. 

Other tombs of departed greatness I found 
in Pere la Chaise. Moliere and La Fontaine 
rest side by side. Racine is a neighbor to them. 
Messena, Kellermann, Davoust, David, Talma, 
Auber, Rossini, De Musset, Desclee, and many 
other famous names, can there be read, in the 
letters of death. Rachel's tomb is in the 
Hebrew quarter of the cemetery, — a tall, nar- 
row, stone structure, with a grated door, over 
which the word, Rachel, is graven, in black 
letters. Looking through the grating I saw a 
shelf on which were vases and flowers, and 
beneath it were fourteen immortelle wreaths. A 
few cards, left by pilgrims to that shrine of 
genius, were upon the floor, and I ventured to 
add my own, in due homage to the memory of a 
great actress, and I gathered a few leaves from 
the shrubbery that grows in front of her grave. 



360 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Pere la Chaise is comparatively destitute 
of flowers and grass. It contains a few avenues 
of trees, but for the most part it is a mass of 
ponderous tombs, crowded upon a hot hill-side 
which is traversed by little stony pathways 
sweltering in sun and dust. No sadder grave- 
yard was ever seen. All the acute anguish of 
remediless suffering, all the abject misery and 
arid desolation of hopeless grief, is symbolized 
in that melancholy place. Artisans were repair- 
ing the tomb of Heloise and Abelard, and 
that, for a while, converted a bit of old 
romance to modern commonness. Still, I saw 
the tomb, and it was elevating to think that 
there may be "Words which are things, hopes 
which do not deceive." 

Some observers do scant justice to the solid 
qualities in the French character. That char- 
acter is mercurial, but it contains elements of 
terrific intensity and power, and that you 
feel, as perhaps you never have felt it before, 
when you look at such works as the Pantheon, 
the Madeleine, the Invalides, the Opera House, 
the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the miles of 



A FRENCH VIGNETTE 361 

stone embankment that hem the Seine on both 
its sides. The grandest old building in Paris, 
also a living witness to French power and 
purpose, is the church of Notre Dame. It 
does not displace, in the reverence of Ameri- 
cans, the glory of Westminster Abbey, but it 
fills almost an equal place in their memory. 
Its arches are not so grand, its associations 
are not so sacred ; but it is exceedingly beautiful 
in form; and by reason of its skilfully devised 
vistas it is invested with more of the alluring 
attribute of mystery. You can see the chapel 
in which Mary Stuart was married to her 
first husband, King Francis the Second, of 
France, and in which King Henry the Sixth, 
of England, was crowned, and you can stand 
on the spot on which Napoleon invested himself 
with the imperial diadem. I climbed the tower 
of that famous cathedral and at the loftiest 
attainable height pictured, in fancy, the awful 
closing scene of "The Hunchback of Notre 
Dame." That romance seemed the truth then, 
and Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and Quasimodo 
were as real as Richelieu. There is a vine 



862 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

growing near the bell-tower and some children 
were at play there, on the stone platform. 
I went in beneath the bell and smote upon it 
with a wooden mallet and heard its rich, 
melodious, soulful music. The four hundred 
steps are well worn that lead to the tower 
of Notre Dame. There are few places on 
earth so fraught with memories, few that so 
well repay the homage of a pilgrim from a 
foreign land. 



XXIV. 

FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH. 

The journey from London to Edinburgh 
by the Cathedral route is one of the most 
interesting that can be made in England. 
At first, indeed, the scenery is not striking, 
but even at first you are whirled past spots 
of exceptional historic and literary interest, — 
among them the battlefield of Barnet, and the 
ancient, stately abbey of St. Albans. Soon 
these are gone, and presently, dashing through 
a flat country, you get a clear view of Peter- 
borough Cathedral, massive, dark, and splendid, 
with its graceful cone-shaped pinnacles, its vast 
square central tower, and the three great 
pointed and recessed arches that adorn its 
west front. That church contains the dust of 
Queen Catherine, the Spanish wife of King 
Henry the Eighth, who died at Kimbolton 

363 



364 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Castle, Huntingdonshire, in 1535, and there, in 
1587, the remains of Queen Mary Stuart were 
first buried, — resting there a long time before 
her son, King James the First, conveyed them 
to Westminster Abbey. Both those queens 
were buried by the same gravedigger, — old 
Scarlett, the noted sexton, whose portrait is 
in the Cathedral, and who died, July 2, 1591, 
aged ninety-eight. 

The country is so level that the receding 
tower of Peterborough remains for a long time 
in sight, but soon, — as the train speeds through 
pastures of clover and through fields of green 
and red and yellow herbage, divided by glim- 
mering hedges and diversified by red-roofed 
villages and gray church towers, — the land 
grows hilly, and long white roads are visible, 
stretching away like bands of silver over the 
lonely hill-tops. Figures of gleaners are seen, 
now and then, scattered through fields whence 
the harvest has lately been gathered. Sheep 
are feeding in the pastures, and cattle are 
couched under fringes of wood. The bright sod 
sparkles with the golden yellow of the colt's- 



LONDON TO EDINBURGH 365 

foot, and sometimes the scarlet waves of the 
poppy come tumbling into the plain, like a 
cataract of fire. Windmills spread their whirl- 
ing sails upon the summits round about, and 
over the nestling ivy-clad cottages and over 
the stately trees there are great flights of 
birds. The sky is gray and faintly suf-» 
fused with sunshine, but there is no glare and 
no heat, and often the wind is laden with a 
fragrance of wild-flowers and hay. 

It is noon at Grantham, where there is only 
time enough to see that this is a flourishing city 
of red-brick houses and fine spacious streets, 
with a lofty, spired church, and far away east- 
ward a high line of hills. Historic Newark is 
presently reached and passed, — a busy, con- 
tented town, smiling through the sunshine and 
mist, and as it fades in the distance I remember 
that we are leaving Lincoln, with its glorious 
cathedral, to the southeast, and to the west 
Newstead Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and 
Hucknall-Torkard, — places memorably asso- 
ciated with the poet Byron and dear to 
every lover of poetic literature. At Mark- 



366 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

ham the country is exceedingly pretty, 
with woods and hills over which multitudes 
of starlings are in full career. About Bawtry 
the land is flat, and flat it continues to be 
until the train has sped a considerable way 
beyond York. But in the meantime it flashes 
through opulent Doncaster, famed for manu- 
factories and for horse-races, rosy and active 
amid the bright green fields. At Selby, — a 
large red-brick city, upon the banks of a broad 
river, — a massive old church tower looms 
conspicuous under smoky skies. In the out- 
skirts of that town there are cosey houses clad 
with ivy, in which the pilgrim might well be 
pleased to linger; but there is no pause, and 
in a little while magnificent York bursts upon 
the view, superb under a black sky that is full 
of driving clouds. The Minster stands out like 
a mountain, and the giant towers rear them- 
selves in solemn majesty, — the grandest piece 
of church architecture in England! The brim- 
ming Ouse shines as if it were a stream of 
liquid ebony. The meadows around the city 
glow like living emeralds, while the harvest- 



LONDON TO EDINBURGH 867 

fields are stored and teeming with stacks of 
golden grain. Great flights of startled doves 
people the air, — as white as snow under the 
sable fleeces of the driving storm. The swift 
train bears toward Thirsk now, leaving, west- 
ward of the track, old Ripon, in the distance, 
memorable for many associations, — especially 
the contiguity of that grandest of ecclesiastical 
ruins, Fountains Abbey, — and cherished in 
theatrical annals as the place of the birth, death, 
and burial of the distinguished founder of the 
Jefferson Family of actors. Bleak Haworth is 
not far distant, and remembrance of it 
prompts sympathetic thought of the strange 
genius of Charlotte Bronte. Darlington is the 
next important place, a town of manufacture, 
and evidently prosperous. This is the land 
of stone walls and stone cottages, — the grim 
precinct of Durham. The country is culti- 
vated, but rougher than the Midlands, and the 
essentially diversified character of England 
is once again impressed upon your mind. 
All through this region there are little white- 
walled houses with red roofs. At Ferry 



368 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

Hill the scenery becomes a mass of rocky 
gorges and densely wooded ravines, and 
when, after a brief interval of eager 
expectation, the noble towers of Durham 
Cathedral sweep into the prospect, that superb 
monument of ancient devotion, together with 
all the dark gray shapes of that pictorial city, 
— so magnificently placed, in a deep, wide 
gorge, through which flows the brimming 
Weir, — are seen, under a sky of the softest 
blue, dappled with white clouds of drifting 
fleece. Durham is all too quickly passed, 
fading in a landscape sweetly mellowed by 
a faint blue mist. Then stately rural man- 
sions appear, half hidden among great trees. 
Wreaths of smoke curl upward from scat- 
tered dwellings all around the circle of the 
hills. Each distant summit is seen to be 
crowned by a tower or a town. A fine castle 
springs into view just before Birtley glances 
by, and you see that this is a place of wood- 
lands, piquant with a little of the roughness 
of unsophisticated nature. But the scene 
changes suddenly, as in a theatre, and almost 




DURHAM CATHEDRAL— FROM SOUTHWEST 



A dim and mighty Minster of old timei 
A temple shadowy with remembrances 

Of the majestic past. 

FELICIA IIEMANS. 



LONDON TO EDINBURGH 369 

in a moment the broad, teeming Tyne blazes 
beneath the scorching summer sun, and the 
gray houses of Gateshead and Newcastle fill 
the picture with life and motion. The waves 
glance and sparkle, — a wide plain of shim- 
mering silver. The stream is alive with ship- 
ping. A busier scene could not be found in 
all this land, nor one more strikingly repre- 
sentative of the industrial character and 
interests of England. 

After leaving Newcastle the train glides past 
a gentle, winding ravine, thickly wooded on both 
its sides, with a bright stream glancing in its 
depth. The meadows all around are green, 
fresh, and smiling, and soon the road skirts 
beautiful Morpeth, bestriding a dark and lovely 
river and crouched in a bosky dell. At Wid- 
drington the land shelves downward, the trees 
become sparse, and you catch a faint glimpse 
of the sea, — the broad blue wilderness of the 
Northern Ocean. From this point onward 
the panorama is one of unbroken loveliness. 
Around you are spacious meadows of fern, 
diversified with clumps of fir-trees, and the 



370 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD 

sweet wind that blows upon your face seems 
glad and buoyant with its exultant vitality. 
At Warkworth Castle, once the home of the 
noble Hotspur, the ocean view is especially 
magnificent, — the brown and red sails of the 
many and various vessels descried at sea con- 
tributing to the prospect a lovely element of 
picturesque character. Alnwick, with its storied 
associations of "the Percy out of Northumber- 
land," is left to the westward, while on the east 
the romantic village of Alnmouth wooes the 
traveller with an irresistible charm. No one 
who has once seen that exquisite place can 
be content without seeing it again, — and 
yet there is no greater wisdom in the conduct 
of life than to avoid a second sight of 
any spot where you have once been happy. 
That village, with its little lighthouse and grace- 
ful steeple, is built upon a promontory in the 
sea, and is approached, over the sands, by a 
long, isolated road across a bridge of four fine 
arches. At Long Houghton a grand church 
uprears its vast square tower, lonely and 
solemn in its place of graves. Royal Berwick 



LONDON TO EDINBURGH 371 

comes next, serene upon its ocean crag, with 
the white-crested waves curling on its beach 
and the glad waters of the Tweed kissing the 
fringes of its sovereign mantle, as they rush 
into the sea. The sun is sinking now, and over 
the many-colored meadows, red and brown and 
golden and green, the long, thin shadows of 
the trees slope eastward and softly hint the 
death of day. The sweet breeze of evening 
stirs the long grasses, and on many a gray 
stone house shakes the late pink and yellow 
roses and makes the ivy tremble. It is Scot- 
land now, and speeding through the storied 
Border I keep the ocean almost constantly 
in view, — losing it for a little while at Dunbar, 
but finding it again at Drem, — till, past the 
battlefield of Prestonpans, and past the quaint 
villages of Cockenzie and Musselburgh and the 
villas of Portobello, the train comes slowly 
to a pause in the shadow of Arthur's Seat, 
where the great lion crouches over the glorious 
city of Edinburgh. 



MAK 9 |9| j 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 

ffir.i, 9 191! 



